


Little by Little

by sakurayeol (renaihyung)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempt at Humor, Baekhyun is a hoe, Fluff, Jealousy, M/M, Nerd Chanyeol, Opposites Attract, Police Procedural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 02:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10375926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaihyung/pseuds/sakurayeol
Summary: It takes a night in a holding cell over some stained boxers and a World of Warcraft battle for Baekhyun to realise what he’s been doing wrong and what Chanyeol’s been missing out on.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is all about building the scene and most of what happens now will be mentioned in passing in chapter 2. Hope you guys like it and stick with it, the next chapter is going to be suuuuupppperrr long just as a heads up. Any feedback so far is appreciated! (Literally anything I don't mind) ^.^

“Oh.”

It’s all Chanyeol can bring himself to say as he stands a couple of steps away from the counter and ‘admires’ what he’s done so far. Or more rightly what he _hasn’t_ done. 

He’s not made a masterpiece, that’s for sure. Actually, he’s wondering if this could even surpass for what it’s supposed to be, which is, believe it or not, a cake. Sure, it wasn’t the best looking thing in the world, but it didn’t even look all that edible despite Chanyeol following the recipe as well as he could.

 _Cover it with icing._ He thinks, already scrambling around in the cupboards for some kind of icing sugar. 

Jongdae wouldn’t mind if the ugly birthday cake was covered in some kind of sweet decoration. At least that’s what Chanyeol hopes. 

Water in a bowl, icing sugar dabbled in, his whisk in hand; he breathes in, staring down at the cake for as long as he can bare. 

As of that moment, he’d been stood in his kitchen for three hours attempting to sort some kind of birthday cake center piece for Jongdae’s party. Now going into the third solid hour, he’s teetering on the verge of saying ‘fuck it’ and setting it on fire. Fuck birthdays, fuck Jongdae and most certainly _fuck baking_.

The bowl is placed under his arm, the icing mixture in the bowl already, the whisk in his fist.

With unrelenting force, Chanyeol practically attacks the bowl of icing contents like it’s his only hope of saving himself and the cake. He’d promised Sehun and Junmyeon that he’d make a cake for Jongdae’s birthday, and that the cake would be done three days before the party.

It’s about 21 hours until Jongdae’s party officially starts, and low and behold the cake remains looking ugly as all hell and significantly naked without the icing. 

Why didn’t he just buy one of those cakes that they sell in the store with a Minion on it or something?

Chanyeol’s whisking the icing with so much force that more of it is spattering onto his kitchen cupboards, walls and surprisingly the ceiling than was mixing together in the bowl. Not to mention that his black Queen shirt is significantly stained with suspicious white ropes of batter thanks to the ugly cake and the icing incident. 

His nose is scrunched up in his efforts, his eyes flittering between the sponge and the bowl in his hands determinedly as though by sheer will power the cake would turn into something Gordon Ramsey had whipped up earlier.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work. 

Being so into the moment of saving the birthday food, Chanyeol doesn’t hear his phone ringing from the counter behind him. It’s only as he pauses for a moment because of a pretty severe cramp in his shoulders that he hears the vibrating of his phone and the embarrassing tone of My Neck, My Back by Khia that Sehun had locked as his ringtone a couple of weeks ago. 

He sets the bowl down, and being the clumsy person he is, accidentally drops it. As it stumbles onto the counter, it catches the edge of the worktop, slipping from under his grip. Inevitably escaping his grasp, he ends up dipping his fingers into the mixture of the white icing in a battle to gain control of the bowl again.

“ _Oh._ ” He repeats himself from before, not being able to find any other words. 

He’s breathing through his nose and out through his mouth in an attempt to calm himself. 

Chanyeol looks to his left and sees his phone buzzing against the worktop, precariously close to the edge of the cabinet, the entire event being sound scored to the notorious lyrical genius of My Neck, My Back. It hangs there, looking tempting and cunning as though it wanted to fall.

He finds a cloth with surprising speed and attempts to wipe his hands whilst simultaneously attempting to answer the call with the side of his uniced wrist. 

The caller ID was a very unflattering picture of Sehun, and it happened to be one of Chanyeol’s favourites.

He hears a small and quiet version of Sehun’s voice come out the receiver after a brief few seconds of furious wrist tapping. “Chan? Are you there?”

Still with sticky hands due to the white icing that looked an awful lot like something else he’d rather not mention, he somehow uses a part of his thin wrist to tap the ‘speaker’ button on the screen, finally able to hear Sehun properly. 

“Hey man.” He winces as he leans against the counter and accidentally catapults a spoon covered in cake batter across the room. This wasn’t going well. “What’s up?”

Sehun sounded frantic, which only made Chanyeol a little more on edge and out of his comfort zone that usual. “I need your help. Immediately.”

The tall boy, who was in the midst of bending down to retrieve the spoon from the floor, straightens up in his sudden panic at his friend’s words. In fact he stands so quickly that he finds himself hitting his head on a particularly sharp corner of the counter and yelping in pain. He swallows it down though, more concerned about others just like he usually was. “Help? Are you hurt? Are you in trouble?” 

Chanyeol’s practically planning the route from Sehun’s place to the ER in his mind now, and which route would be better if there was traffic. 

“Yeah I’m in some big big trouble right now, and I’m most definitely hurt.” 

Sehun’s still talking quickly, and he sounds like he’s in a state of panic. It’s putting Chanyeol more and more on edge as he is already retrieving his phone and storming out of the kitchen to get some shoes.

“What happened-?” He runs into his room, tugging on the first pair of shoes he sees, making sure they weren’t completely mismatched with his outfit on the way out and into the hallway. 

“Well, I was on a quest through the Terokka Forest map and I pull out my Frostmourne blade because I could sense something was up, and then because Allura is a Mage she just teleported back to the Abandoned Camp. I was alone -I still _am_ alone by the way- and I’m battling _six_ Death Knights on my own.” 

Chanyeol’s stopped in the middle of his hallway, his shoes only half on and only one arm in his coat sleeve. “I meant in real life, not in game play.” He finds himself muttering, moving to kick his shoes off again and remove himself from the arms of his coat.

“This is real life!” Sehun shouts, the sounds of the keyboard of his laptop being furiously tapped echoing through the phone. “And I need your help.” He adds a little softer in an attempt to be persuasive.

Chanyeol fishes for an excuse, “I’ve still not made the cake.” 

“Fuck the cake.” Sehun practically whines as he mumbles something on the end about the Death Knights using a Mage now for healing powers. “Jongdae can bare witness to our online heroics against the forces of evil instead of eating some awful birthday cake- no offence, man.”

Thank god him and Sehun were on the same wavelength about the goddamn cake, the icing was practically like water anyway, and most of it was on Chanyeol’s shirt he notes as he looks down at it.

Chanyeol actually stands there in his hallway and debates whether or not he should provide help. He shrugs, meant for no one other than himself due to the fact that Sehun can’t see him, and decides to hunt down his laptop.

“Seriously though, _six_?” He says whilst meandering through the living room and checking his gaming chair for the laptop.

“ _Six._ ” Sehun seems to do some more frantic button bashing. “I’m almost out of health here. Are you nearly online?”

“I can’t find my laptop-” Chanyeol cuts himself off whilst he’s searching under the table where his chargers were. He almost bangs his head again as he stands up abruptly in realisation. “Oh shit, Sehun. I gave it to Jongdae to finish his business management paper because his laptop is broken.” 

He hears Sehun groan loudly on the other end, practically a screech of revolt. There’s more key bashing now, although it also sounded like Sehun knocked something over. “Go to Jongdae.” He says with a deep voice, “Find Jongdae now and help me the fuck out, I can’t lose my Frostmourne blade dude, I just can’t.”

Chanyeol finds himself heading in the direction of the door to his apartment again, pulling the shoes from before back onto his feet and slipping into his coat. 

“Alright I’m going round to Jongdae’s. If he’s at home then I’ll help you.” 

Sehun groans in response, the noise of the keyboard bashing getting louder out of his desperation. “Run there please. If I have to run to the edge of the forest again to escape these losers I swear to God-”

As Chanyeol makes it to the door of his apartment he expertly swings the backpack lying next to the shoe rack onto his shoulder and tugs on the door as he closes it behind him, waiting for it to give a final click to show it was truly locked. 

“Bye Sehun.” 

 

He didn’t exactly run there, but he understood the importance of the situation (having been in need of some assistance on World of Warcraft before in a surprisingly similar incident) and decided that a brisk walk would suffice. 

It’s cold out, which was something he didn’t exactly consider when his mind was on his laptop and one of his best friends was in virtual reality danger. As a result, he finds that the thin bomber jacket he’d slipped on wasn’t doing anything in the fight against the weather and had resulted in Chanyeol shivering as the frost crept into the crevices of his jacket.

He speeds up, numb fingers fumbling with the zip of his pocket and slipping his phone out as he power walks to Jongdae’s apartment four blocks away.

When his phone is in his hand he quickly scrolls for Jongdae’s number, calling in an attempt to see if he was at home. He repeats this seven times, every time leaving a message, before he decides to give in and say that Jongdae’s either out or he’s asleep.

The sun has set whilst he’s walking, a murky blue darkness setting over the entire scene of the city as he gradually got nearer to the apartment building. The lack of sun seems to somehow make it colder and Chanyeol prays with every fibre of his being that his best friend is at home and is making some kind of spicy soup to warm him up when he arrives.

He knows both things are highly unlikely because Jongdae’s probably at work today and even if Jongdae was there, his cooking skills were dreadful.

Regardless, Chanyeol charges on.

Jongdae lived in a relatively nice block of apartments down the East side of town, his apartment being the nicest out of the three of them. Chanyeol and Sehun’s apartment buildings were a little more on the grubby side, not accompanied with things like a doorman and a balcony like Jongdae’s were. They usually hung out together there as a result of that, and Chanyeol knew the route there like the back of his hand. 

Chanyeol keeps his phone in his fist just in case Jongdae decides that he wants to return his calls any time soon, but his other hand is tightly pulling on the strap of his Vans backpack and keeping the comfort of it against his back securely. He was more of an introvert these days and wasn’t a big ‘going out in the freezing cold just for the sake of going outside’ kind of person anymore, so the bag was acting as some kind of support. 

Nowadays, being a shut in university student, he doesn’t see the point in going out for the sake of it.

As he rounds the last corner to Jongdae’s place, the apartment building in sight now, his phone starts to buzz in the tight death grip he’d sealed around his cell. Without even considering the caller ID, Chanyeol picks up the phone and presses it against his ear, the warmth of his hand transferring some kind of heat to his blue ears. 

He really should have worn something warmer.

“Jongdae, are you home? I need my-”

“It’s me, dumbass.” 

Chanyeol sighs heavily when he realises it’s just Sehun again. “What now?” 

He realises it sounds rather rude and he’s about to retract his words and start over, but Sehun doesn’t even seem to notice. 

“I’ve had to surrender all those potions we got on that quest three days ago. I had no other choice, they’re still after me now. Those greedy goblins took a damn ironshield potion for granted- I mean, who _does_ that? They’re so rare, Chanyeol. I can’t believe I gave it away and they’re _still_ chasing me-”

Chanyeol reaches the revolving door of the lobby entrance of Jongdae’s apartment building, staring blankly at the door and the doorman, who stands beside it looking as though he would be significantly unbothered if there were to be an uninvited guest walking inside about to break in and steal people’s personal belongings. 

Not that Chanyeol could blame him, stuff like that didn’t really happen in a part of town like this. 

“Sehun, do you want me to get my laptop or not?” Chanyeol finds himself asking. 

He stands there watching the doorman and wondering whether he could get into the building without verifying he was here to steal back his laptop from his friend up on the sixth floor and not be kicked out immediately after. So far, his brain is saying don’t even risk it. 

He doesn’t want Jongdae to get kicked out of his apartment or something, that wouldn’t be fair.

“Of course I do.” Sehun says incredulously, the sound of significant key bashing still evident. Chanyeol wonders if his fingers are hurting from the furious key tapping he seems to be doing. “Wait, is that just a ploy for you to tell me to hang up?” 

Ignoring Sehun’s last comment, Chanyeol surveys the scene in front of him and weighs up his options on how he should go about getting in without being asked questions. He knew they didn’t just let anyone into the building without permission, there was some kind of protocol that Jongdae had gone over with Chanyeol at some point before but, unsurprisingly, Chanyeol had remained unbothered and hadn’t listened to a word of it. He recalls that the receptionist would ask for ID for reference if anything was taken from the apartment and reported, so he assumes from this that taking the front entrance is a no go zone.

He makes a mental note to listen more often, especially to Jongdae.

This whole operation was turning into something like breaking into Fort Knox. Why didn’t Jongdae just live in a grubby cheap apartment downtown like Sehun and Chanyeol did? At least then it would be easier for his best friend to break into his apartment when he needed to most.

He huffs out a sharp breath with force, ruffling his fringe that he hadn’t had time to style that morning upwards. He felt bad for leaving Sehun online in mortal danger, and if it wasn’t for Sehun’s desperation for Chanyeol’s help, he’s sure he would have just given in and gone back to trying to fix the unfortunate birthday cake without much luck. 

But, he’s here now. And besides, Sehun was still whining. 

“Chanyeol?” There’s an impatient noise from the other side of the line. “Don’t space out on me.” 

He’s going to have to make a decision of walking away and leaving Sehun to fend for himself or breaking into his best friend’s apartment and sneaking through security on the door to get his goddamn laptop. 

“Dude, I’m going to have to find a way into Jongdae’s apartment. I don’t think he’s home today.” Chanyeol says, his voice trailing off at the end as his mind ticks over all the possibilities he could try to get inside. 

Sehun says simply, “If you can’t get through the door then try the back alleyway. There’s an entrance for the maintenance staff, right?” 

“That’s a good idea, but I don’t have a key to Jongdae’s apartment. I lost it at that house party we went to a few weeks back.” 

“Nice one, Park.” 

“Do you want my help or not?”

“Point taken.” 

“I’ll call you later when I have this sorted out.” 

“Alright. Hurry, I think the greedy goblins that stole my potions have contacted some dark mages from some of the other maps. At this rate I’m just going to be the basic armor I stand up in when you reach me.”

The boy lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding as he ends the call and rounds the sharp corner into the alleyway directly adjacent to the left side of the apartment building, brushing his sweaty hands onto his dark skinny jeans.

Anyone would think the nerdy flour-stained IT student with the big fake glasses and round eyes had pulled off a bank job or a heist with the way he was acting. 

Was entering an apartment building without permission an offence? 

As Chanyeol nears the end of the alleyway and towards the small door by the dumpsters at the back where the fire escape let out, he finds himself desperately hoping it’s not. 

If there’s one thing he doesn’t want for his almost-birthday, it’s a criminal record.

 

 

 

His head is pressed firmly into the book on Korean History, his shoulders slouched and his body aching for the need to go home and get some much needed shut eye. However, none of his body’s wishes were possible. Being the week a resented exam were to come up, Byun Baekhyun discovers that if he were to leave now he’d be kicked out of the current class and he’d fail the subject.

Maybe that’s not actually a bad thing, he considers.

But he knows it is, deep down where his logic is hidden. 

Baekhyun’s been there for a total of four hours now, his body positively thrumming with the negative energy of just not getting any studying done. For around one hour out of the four he had been in the position he finds himself in now; his face resting on the furthest table away from the door to the library and the textbook he should be making notes from acting as his pillow. 

His eyes refused to stay open, and as a result he finds himself struggling to remain conscious. 

He’s fallen asleep in here before, that’s possibly the worst thing. Many a time had the librarian (a kind old lady in her sixties who had a soft spot for the infamous charismatic Baekhyun) come over and had to subject herself to shaking his shoulder gently until he woke from his slumber so she could lock up the building and go home. 

Bless her heart.

Said librarian had been checking up on Baekhyun all day, just looking over through bookshelves whilst she ordered the books again or did some paperwork behind the large oak desk in the centre of the room. She didn’t speak often, and today appeared to be one of her more quieter days than normal, not that Baekhyun minded, he was having problems of his own today.

Last night had been quite the whirlwind of emotions and events, he sees in hindsight that this much was true. 

He’d been in his shared apartment at the start of the night, preparing the thoughts of an early night’s sleep and a simple short work out before he slipped in between the covers. It was all mildly short lived, practically a fantasy really. He’d received a text from Jongin that a frat party was taking place over on campus and if he missed out on such a wild party on a thursday night then he’d regret it. Not wanting to regret anything (low and behold he was certainly regretting it now) he changed out of his Star Wars pyjamas and set off for campus just two blocks North of his apartment.

Long story short, he’d drank too much with too many people, he’d danced a little too hard and apparently had made it home with someone he didn’t really know all that well. Due to it being a Thursday night, Baekhyun was a little impressed the whole series of events took place at all. It was needless to say that a lot of people who were there last night wouldn’t be turning up to their morning classes.

Now, sat in the library and completely full of regret and never ending pain pretty much everywhere, revising the Korean History book in front of him seemed pretty much impossible. 

His head was a mess of aching and an overwhelming need to just not think about anything in particular and shut off. Unfortunately, he’d discovered on his walk of shame after leaving said one night stand’s apartment that he had locked himself out of his own humble abode and had misplaced his keys, which meant he was faced with the conundrum of either smashing his window open with a brick and scaling the guttering, or just waiting until his roommate, Minseok, was home. 

Unfortunately, said roommate didn’t return until 10 o’clock that evening due to the fact he was at a chemical engineering seminar across town for extra credit and wouldn’t be able to come back and give Baekhyun the key to get inside at any point. It was now 4:30, and Baekhyun definitely didn’t have the patience to wait around for five and a half hours. Besides, the library was closing in 15 minutes so he was running out of places to shelter. 

Of course Baekhyun could always call his landlord to let him back into the flat, it seemed like a logical explanation. It would be the sensible thing to do, if only Baekhyun wasn’t terrified of their landlord; so much so that he always posted the rent money early so as to avoid confrontation. 

Their landlord, a 6 foot 4 hunk of meat with a moustache and six o’clock shadow wasn’t the kindest of old ladies. If anything, Baekhyun would rather put sticks in his eyes and light them on fire than spend three seconds in that woman’s company. It didn’t help that the woman had a vendetta against Baekhyun despite him being an all round decent tenant.

He feels a hand on his shoulder, gently shaking him back to consciousness.

He stirs and raises his head from the book that was acting as his pillow. Baekhyun’s been in the position so long his forehead was stuck to the pages and they were rising with him as he inclines his head to meet the eyes of the elderly librarian, who Baekhyun didn’t mind being in the company of unlike their landlord.

“Time to pack up, hun.” She smiles wearily at him, looking concerned. 

He nods, knowing that now he’d have to find something to do with himself.

As the lady walks away, Baekhyun’s eyes trail to the window as he gathers his bearings as best as he can. It’s started to lightly drizzle outside, and he can tell from the way the trees on campus are slightly bent against the wind that there’s an unfortunate cross breeze.

He wishes the ground beneath him would open up and swallow him whole. 

He’d come straight to the library after discovering his apartment wasn’t open, therefore he was still in the clothes he had ventured out in last night (which was only a thin pair of black slacks and white button down with three of the buttons undone so his collarbones were exposed). In short, he was going to get sick from the lack of covering on his body in this weather. 

He had to find a solution.

Baekhyun’s closing the Korean History book in front of him, noting with a jolt that most of his BB cream he had applied to his forehead last night was looking significantly pretty on the pages focused on the colonial period. He makes an attempt to wipe it off with his sleeve and uses the white material to try and remove most of the make up from the pages. It doesn’t really work but at least he tried.

As Baekhyun stands from his chair, he notes how… _breezy_ his current situation was.

Last night’s one night stand hadn’t been anything thrilling and was really just mediocre in the grand scheme of things compared to some of the great nights Baekhyun’s had in the past (he got around a lot, he doesn’t like to make a thing of it though- really he doesn’t). So, with the sex only being mediocre and mildly disappointing, his anger and general distaste to the fact he left his underwear there seemed justifiable and amplified in tribute. 

He’d been in a rush to escape the morning confrontation of such a boring night, and as such had coincidentally found himself already arranging his member in his jeans as he made his way to the elevator of the building and leaving his abandoned underpants behind. Baekhyun was sure he was just going home, that he could replace the underwear another time and leave his one night standee the present of such high quality undergarments. 

Oh how wrong he was.

He has to ‘rearrange’ himself behind the bookshelves so the librarian didn’t catch him doing such a thing in public. He may feel dirty and significantly sexually satisfied even after an average one night stand, but that didn’t mean the whole world needed to know about it. 

Baekhyun returns the book to its place on the shelf at the back of the large room and gathers his things. His ‘things’ only consisting of a box of aspirin he’d bought at the pharmacy on the way back from the one night stand’s house with some spare change he had found in his jean pockets and a pen someone had left on the desk that he had been making notes with, it wasn’t exactly a haul of any kind.

He feels dejected with the knowledge he now had to walk around for five and a half hours with nothing to do. He could always visit Luhan’s house, but no doubt the frat boy wouldn’t be in and it would be Baekhyun’s luck to run into someone he knew on that side of town who he most likely didn’t really fancy talking to today when he was in such a grouchy mood. Like Jongin for example; Baekhyun needed all the patience in the world when it came to talking to him.

Why didn’t him and Minseok just hide a spare key under a flower pot or a welcome mat like everyone else did? 

It’s as Baekhyun’s making his way through the electronic doors and onto the rain smeared sidewalk that he is subjected to a revelation. 

He _knows_ where his apartment keys are.

He actually _remembers_ where he put them.

Not stopping to consider how weird the whole situation was (it was never usually the protocol of the one night stand affair to return to the scene of the crime), Baekhyun charges into the street and begins marching with his head down and his arms wrapped tightly around himself as the true bitterness of the weather sets in. 

The apartment keys are with his underpants.

 

 

 

Chanyeol’s taking the maintenance flight of stairs three at a time, thanking god for blessing him with long legs in a time of need like this. Usually they were an inconvenience so it was nice to see them coming to some good use. 

Although he wouldn’t admit it out loud, that was the first outing he had taken away from his apartment for something along the lines of two weeks now. 

He needed to get out more.

In his pocket, he can feel his phone going crazy with the recurring and frequent phone calls from Sehun, probably telling him about more Goblins and Mages and Death Knights that were taking all of his hard earned supplies from quests Chanyeol and him had completed over the last month. He doesn’t answer them, knowing that Sehun just needs those healing spells more than anything else.

He’s a man on a mission.

Chanyeol reached Jongdae’s floor after a couple of minutes of climbing, the backs of his calves burning as he didn’t usually participate in that much exercise to save his life. Or in this situation to save Sehun’s MMORPG life which was currently in mortal danger.

He knows the layout of the corridors so with no time at all he’s stood in front of Jongdae’s apartment door, the only thing lying between him and his laptop. 

He’s going to have to break in.

Chanyeol looks around guiltily, expecting to see all of Jongdae’s neighbors swarming in the corridor waiting to call security on him and report him to the police where he would most likely have to be taken for a statement or a court case. 

He gulps, not wanting to do such a thing. The mere word of police making him agitated and nervous.

Chanyeol takes his phone out of his pocket and looks at it, trying to come to some kind of collective decision on whether he should retrieve his laptop or wait here for Jongdae to return. 

He’s had 32 missed calls from Sehun. He’s also had 54 texts from Sehun, which mostly consist of more keyboard smashing on his phone as opposed to his laptop and the occasional ‘Chanyeol please, I’ll buy you those tickets to Harry Potter World’ kind of bribe, which he’d be lying if he said didn’t tempt him further into knocking down Jongdae’s door. 

There’s one message that catches his eye though, and coincidentally is the thing that ticks his decision to break in over the edge.

It simply reads - ‘KM1990’ and that’s all the information that Chanyeol needs, in fact, the information almost causes him to drop his phone. 

There were some players who were well known in the world of World of Warcraft. Message boards and Reddit posts that were set to infinite scroll options were littered with mentions of notorious players and the occasional rumor regarding the personal life and online life of these Warcraft legends. 

In particular there was one player that had been the most well known for some time. He was practically a living legend, and had only been seen online by a handful of players who had confessed their stories on long Tumblr posts with thousands of notes. Most people who played joined guilds and the guilds would meander through the maps on quests together, it was the normality for World of Warcraft effective gameplay. 

But, this legend who had the username KM1990, was something of a lone wolf. 

As far as the Internet community could discern, this player had never been in a guild and had gained his top level status entirely on his own. With a score of 23000 and counting daily, the world should understandably be wondering how on earth it was possible to gain such a high level. 

It was practically a myth, however, there were stories from players who had come into contact with player KM1990 that within a matter of _seconds_ had lost everything but the basic issued armor that every player was granted at the start of the game. To do such a thing to even a basic player would take Chanyeol around 9 minutes, maybe for Sehun 11 minutes, of intense gameplay. 

So, imagine the surprise when Chanyeol the nerdy IT student had been informed by his equally nerdy friend Sehun that he was in the midsts of a Warcraft legend. 

He nearly came on the spot. 

In response to the message, Chanyeol decides to send a spasm of keyboard smashes in reply, hoping it will suffice for now and give Sehun the support and reassurance he needs to just hold out as long as possible. 

Putting his phone away, Chanyeol assesses the situation he finds himself faced with both physically and mentally. The door. 

Embarrassingly, he has knowledge on how to expertly pick a lock. He’d read a book in freshman year just as a precaution to ensure if he ever did get locked out his apartment he would be able to get in without having to bust the door down in an attempt to enter. His hands fly to his pockets and he digs around to see if he can find anything in there he could use to get in. 

_In his left-hand side jean pocket, he fishes out a bobby pin he had used to pin his bangs away from his face last night (he’d read an article that hair oil can do terrible things for the skin, and acne never was all that pleasant of an experience)._

Looking around again to check for the overseeing watchdog neighbors, Chanyeol finds himself on his knees in front of Jongdae’s door handle and lock, bobby pin pinched between his index and thumb like he truly knew what he was doing. He’d only read the book and had never actually put it into practice, he just hopes this was the side of his brain that dealt with useless knowledge’s time to shine. 

He fiddles around with it, one hand turning the bobby pin ever so carefully in the lock and the other jiggling the door handle trying to pry the door open. His careful hand around the bobby pin turns into a more urgent one after about 7 minutes of trying, his long fingers being more of a downside than helping in this delicate situation. 

He’s on the verge of throwing in the towel altogether after another 3 minutes of trying. He was sure the book said that using three bobby pins should be enough to undo each seized pin within the lock, and he was doing his best with whatever other things he could find in his pants to do it. So far he was using four bobby pins he had miraculously found in his trousers, but the door still remained unopened. 

It’s only as he ever so slightly moves the third pin to him that he hears a satisfying _’click_ and the door handle he’s jiggling ever so slightly gives way and collapses beneath his hand as he pushes it down. 

The door swings open and Chanyeol looks into the dark apartment from his seat on the hallway carpet, his long legs sprawled out on either side of the door frame. 

He’s so happy with his efforts he decides he might cry. 

Chanyeol gets to his feet clumsily, almost falling back over in the process with a bump on the carpet. He scrambles into the apartment, making sure to yank the bent bobby pins from the lock and push them into his pocket. He can’t reuse them now, but he’s deciding to keep them as a reward for his efforts, a trophy of victory. 

The tall boy practically runs into the apartment hallway, flicking on a light on his right hand side whilst simultaneously scanning the face value contents of the living room to find his laptop. As his eyes search with the new found light, he realises as his senses die away from the adrenaline of sneaking in that there was an odd smell in the room. In the whole flat actually. 

Sweat and semen. 

_Oh._

Chanyeol may have been somewhat naive, but he could associate the stench of sex when he smelt it. He had, after all, lived with Jongdae for some time within his second year at University, and Jongdae was one of the more renowned easy lays on campus. 

Chanyeol had actually come to consider once whether it was just himself that Jongdae had not slept with at this stage. Although Sehun seemed somewhat unbothered by Jongdae’s apparently pretty cock that everyone in his music class waffled on about, so maybe Jongdae had a ‘no-friend-fucking’ rule. 

Honestly, Chanyeol had thought it would be imposing to ask about it, so he never did. 

An all too familiar ding of a text message alerted Chanyeol to his senses as he assumes the noise is from the boy in mortal danger, so he decided to breathe through his mouth to avoid the stench in the air that Jongdae had apparently grown accustomed to and grow a pair. Sehun was in peril, after all. 

Baekhyun’s halfway down the fifth avenue with his hands buried in the shallow pockets of his jeans. He’s practically vibrating with how cold he was, shivers running down his spine like some kind of sick weather circuit that was alerting him with the inevitable possibility that he would be in for the treat of pneumonia tomorrow. 

If he had thought his situation down South had been breezy before, his situation now was practically antarctic. Why he had ever considered abandoning his underpants was a decent thing to do was beyond him. He longed for some nylon pants, anything to keep himself contained and somewhat protected against hurricane Katrina that was hurling itself down the fifth avenue. 

Baekhyun’s phone is out of his pocket and his blue fingers are dancing over the keys as best as they can when he can’t exactly feel them all that well. He manages to send a couple of awkward and slightly humorous texts to his one night stand, whom he had apparently swapped numbers with yesterday, asking whether he was at home and if Baekhyun could retrieve his pants with some urgency. 

He leaves his phone in hand and waits for a reply. 

He remembers the direction of his walk this morning and arrives at the vaguely familiar apartment building with haste. He’d rather be at home, listening to some classical music and sipping some green tea. Byun Baekhyun, the classy guy he was renowned for being (yeah right) on his way back to the scene of his latest lay. 

How embarrassing. 

It’s almost automatic the way moves down the street, one hand coming out of his pocket occasionally when there were few people walking around him and rearranging his semi-exposed cock around in his surprisingly uncomfortable jeans. He didn’t even think his penis naturally bent to the left, which in some ways displays that this whole experience could be something of an enlightenment. 

Unlike last night, there was no one in front of the building to check for residental ID or call the residents for a possibility of a guest arriving for them in the lobby area. Baekhyun finds it mildly odd but decides to place it down to the receptionist being on a coffee break or something of the sort. 

As Baekhyun crosses the street with a light jog (which he immediately slows down to a careful walk considering how his genitalia had taken to his urge to run, feeling like a slap on the stomach), he takes no extra time in deciding that going through the front door wouldn’t be an option. 

He didn’t want to risk being asked questions. How embarrassing to say that Baekhyun had left his underpants there, which also happened to be with his keys too- it was a situation he would much rather avoid given the obvious inclination that he wouldn’t be wearing any undergarments when he had been attempting to retrieve them. 

His feet guide him around the side of the building into the back alleyway which was littered with residential rubbish that clearly hadn’t been seen to in some time despite it being clearly visible from the street. Baekhyun carefully edges his way around the dumpsters, biting back what he assumes would be an over exaggerated scream when he senses something scurry past his feet. 

All this for some fucking underpants and keys. 

Baekhyun considers that if he wasn’t already this far into the operation of retrieval then he would most likely consider the underpants lost and get another key cut from Minseok’s copy. However, as he’s eyeing the fire escape stairwell, he notes that it’s a little too late to be backing out of this all now. 

The building was ridiculously high, which makes being scaling the narrow fire escape something of a Mission Impossible sequel. Baekhyun wasn’t exactly scared of heights, he wasn’t really one to be scared of anything but the occasional rat (hence the scurrying disturbing him previously), however the idea of climbing this rickety fire escape that loomed over a substantial amount of pedestrians and traffic, the hours ticking on as the sun was setting in the East, didn’t sound like something he would do in his past time. 

He looks up at the raised stairwell which was hovering a high way above his head. He’d have to jump a good 6 feet if he was ever going to lodge it free and begin scaling the damn thing. It was at times like this where he blames his shortness, coming off small and adorable did nothing when he was alone and in desperate need of keeping his dick somewhat contained. 

The stairwell is practically laughing at him from above as Baekhyun looks around helplessly for some aid, finding nothing but the dumpsters that surround him and the bulging bags of discarded trash. 

Wait. 

Dumpsters. 

Baekhyun’s mind wanders for a moment, somehow managing to drift back to that scene in The Amazing Spider-man with Andrew Garfield where he’s escaping the thugs and has to use the fire escape to get onto the rooftops in those narrow alleyways. To get up Baekhyun recalls that Andrew jumps and swings from three dumpsters where he can get a run-up and eventually hook himself onto the bottom rung of the ladder that attached itself to the fire escape. 

Movies may only be movies but Baekhyun realizes that it’s the only idea he’s had so far. 

He looks around, finding that the closest dumpster is just to his left and is unfortunately not in the best position to run and swing from at all. For the sake of necessity, he finds himself tugging hopelessly at the lid of the dumpster to move it forward and closer towards him. He contains the urge to cover his nose as an eyebrow-singeing smell wafts out of the receptacle. 

Eventually the dumpster shifts, but with sudden force and movement which makes the dumpster hit Baekhyun harshly in the side. As Baekhyun recoils from the pain, he finds that his white button down is now stained with a thick black mark across his torso which looked suspiciously like tar. 

He whines helplessly, this was his favourite shirt. 

Nothing seemed to be going right. 

He intends to ring his local dry cleaners later and discuss the ins and outs of getting tar out of an expensive shirt, but for now, his mind decides that his main task is getting on the fire escape. 

Baekhyun, ever small yet surprisingly athletic, jumps onto the dumpster and balances himself on the precarious platform. He felt like he was in some kind of urban video game, like Grand Theft Auto. He certainly looked like a character from Grand Theft Auto in his current state; his hair messy and his shirt hanging by the last four buttons, exposing his chest. It was also stained across the side, he had no underpants on and was sporting a significantly dilapidated look on his face after all he had been through in the past 24 hours. 

He just wanted to go to bed. 

He runs, the shirt billowing open and exposing more of his collarbones than he had intended. Maybe he looks sexy, he considers. 

As his hands fly out to grip at the last rung of the ladder, his feet leaving the edge of the dumpster, he feels the air knocked out of his lungs by force of hitting the metal support, his eyes bulge at the pain he feels all over. 

No, he decides. Sexy wasn’t the word for it. 

Nevertheless, he made it - sexy or not. 

He scrambles to his feet with full effort, too far gone now to pretend like none of it mattered to him and he had all the time in the world that he so pleased to retrieve his underwear from the apartment eight stories up. He needed his underwear and keys immediately, or so help him God he was going to start kicking up a fuss even more than he already was. He wanted more than anything to be at home with clean underwear and sending the occasional fuck request to someone on campus who would be down for that kind of thing. 

He begins to climb the metal stairwell that crossed upwards along the side of the building. It went for as far as the eye could see when Baekhyun dared himself to take an nonreassuring peek into the gap in the rails, and the information doesn’t exactly give him the spirit to keep climbing. 

“I could have just broken into my own apartment.” 

He wonders aloud, only letting it come out as a quiet mumble under his breath in an attempt to keep somewhat quiet for the neighbours he might be disturbing. 

As he climbs, he passes the windows that adjoined with the fire escape landings at regular intervals. He notes silently that should any of the curtains of these windows be pulled open for whatever reason and the person on the other side happens to make eye contact with the shirt-stained and messy haired wall scaler, they’d be understandably terrified. 

And they’d most likely call the cops. 

He moves a little faster up the flights, treading lightly but swiftly as he makes his way further up the side of the building. 

It’s only as Baekhyun reaches what he assumes to be the fifth floor that he feels a warm sensation on his left forearm. Upon closer inspection as he jogs with soft footfalls to the next landing, he finds that his forearm as a huge gash down it from a little away from his wrist almost to his elbow. It’s so large that Baekhyun has to stop running before he accidentally smashes into the flimsy banister and crashes to the sidewalk in surprise. 

His entire forearm is bleeding profusely, what remained of the left side of his white shirt was now a red splotchy design that Vera Wang would be intrigued by and call it a piece of ‘modern art’ or something. 

What’s even more terrifying is he doesn’t entirely recall feeling so much pain that would accompany such an injury. When he had jumped from the dumpster to the stairwell could be the only answer, maybe he’d caught it on a sharp spike of metal that had never been sanded down on the metal death trap. 

He wasn’t squeamish with blood, but he was freaking out nevertheless. He had no tourniquet to bandage himself up with and as a result just letting himself bleed into the material of his shirt was his current option he was residing with. Not seeing what other options there could be now, he begins shouldering off his shirt (which wasn’t hanging on by much anyway) and exposing his naked torso to the world below him, and most notably to the elements. 

Skilfully, like he’d had to do this a million times before, he begins creating a tourniquet with his once white shirt to stop the bleeding slightly. He’s hissing and biting his bottom lip for support to stop him from crying out as he applies the pressure to the cut, and he’s doing a surprisingly good job of keeping quiet because of it. 

His torso wasn’t exactly toasty before in the Antarctic conditions but now it was positively _freezing_. Goosebumps appeared up and down his arms and chest, his nipples erect and standing to attention in the night air. If this wasn’t the icing on the cake for Baekhyun, he didn’t know what was. 

And, as he climbs a few more flights, he totally misses the elderly lady standing on the landing of the fire escape situated outside apartment G11 is innocently hanging out some last minute laundry on her makeshift clothes line. 

Baekhyun’s so engrossed in his injury and tying the knot on his shirt with careful precision that he misses her completely. He’s taking the stairs three at a time, his short legs only just about managing it without miserably falling onto his face and injuring yet another body part. 

He makes it onto the landing, still unaware of the lady merely three feet in front of him. 

He needn't take another step onto the G floor landing before the poor innocent elderly lady is turning to him with eyes wide and mouth falling open. 

She’s looking at him in pure fear, a tea towel with sewn on kittens in a colourful pattern paused in her grip and dripping wet all over her apron. 

Baekhyun hums slightly in mild satisfaction as he finishes the final tug on the knot on his white Ralph Lauren shirt, noting that although there was a lot of blood still, it didn’t seem to be as bad. The initial shock of the injury must have been the problem and he decides it should be ok within a few hours, it wasn’t too serious. The gash didn’t look like it needed stitches so he should be free of a visit to the emergency room tonight, which is actually one thing that _hasn’t_ happened yet. 

Although he is satisfied with his work, he is not satisfied with his lack of observation. 

He raises his head, and jumps very clearly in surprise. He wasn’t expecting to see someone right in front of him, seemingly out of nowhere. 

The woman looks at him through wide eyes, the pulse clear in her throat from fear. 

_How does one even explain a situation like this?_ Baekhyun considers, suddenly not knowing what to do with his hands. 

He’s dressed with spatters of blood all over his arms and torso, his chest is exposed, he has no underwear on and he’s sporting a hairstyle which he’s decided to title ‘Being Dragged Through a Bush Backwards’. Not to mention he’s climbing the fire escape, which was something that was saved exclusively for murderers and robbers, or if we were following Baekhyun’s earlier logic, Peter Parker/Andrew Garfield. 

The lady hadn’t moved out of pure fear, and Baekhyun hadn’t moved out of surprise yet either. 

Knowing that he had some ounce of his usual charm in there somewhere, beneath the weird situation he found himself in, he decides maybe a handshake or a smile at her would be something of a reassurance. 

“Hey. Sorry, this is a little weird-” 

Baekhyun moves, ever so slightly through the unexpected tension, disrupting whatever the lady had been thinking about in that moment. The movement, no matter how minute, shocks her into thinking that the slight tension of Baekhyun’s arm was the beginning of the move to pull the ‘knife’ from his back pocket. 

She quickly scrambles to her opened window, leaving the basket of damp washing outside on the fire escape landing and hurrying into her apartment as though her life depended on it. 

Baekhyun doesn’t exactly blame her, it’s understandable why she should be so terrified of the strange man covered in blood and dumpster stains who arrived as the sun went down. He sounded like some kind of urban legend used to scare kids. 

He notes without needing to look down at himself that he probably looks like one as well. 

With the lady gone into her apartment, Baekhyun continues climbing the stairs, taking only two at a time now after having a preview at how high up on the fire escape he actually was. He decides he doesn’t want to chance losing his footing this high up. He’d already had a rather traumatic night already, he didn’t need to add to the pain by dying too. 

He reaches the next landing, and he practically cries with happiness when he recognizes the blinds of the apartment he had been finagling in last night with said one night stand. He can see into the room even from where he is on the stairwell. 

Baekhyun leans against the wall as he inspects the window, not wanting to break it at any point despite how far he had come. Sneaking down a back alley and jumping off a dumpster onto the fire escape wasn’t illegal, but breaking into a semi-stranger’s apartment and taking back what was rightfully his was pretty illegal. Although the breaking and entering part was technically the biggest law-disobeying thing he would be getting up to that night (or so he assumes, he hadn’t really thought about his plans for later), he notes that if he smashes the window as a point of entry then he’d be looking at some steep criminal damage charges. 

The mere thought of charges runs a shiver down his spine, as a student who was on the breadline as it was, the thought of paying a 642000 Won fine made him physically sick. 

He gets on his knees, his shins pressing into the metal of the fire escape grid and printing their criss-cross pattern onto the skin. His battered dress shoes are well and truly ruined at this stage and he does nothing to try and keep the expensive leather from creasing. 

Baekhyun experimentally pushes the window inwards, noticing how it moved ever so slightly as though it had been left open in the opposite direction. He scoops his slim fingers underneath the frame and hoists the glass panel outwards, nearly letting out a scream of relief as the window slides out towards him, extending itself and giving a point of entry for Baekhyun and his icy testicles. 

He can’t help but smile to himself widely, not even bothering to hide it as he pulls his legs out from under him and enters the apartment feet first. If he gets away with this and doesn’t get caught by anyone, he decides he’s officially signing up for the secret service. 

Time pulled onwards and more and more texts from Sehun were flooding into Chanyeol’s phone. He assumes his friend is either dead at this stage after encountering the player KM1990 (no one lived to tell the tale, or more rather _they_ did but their character didn’t) or somehow miraculously Sehun had made it to a teleport stop and had managed to escape. If he hadn’t done either of those, Chanyeol suspects he’s hiding somewhere in the forest map that he had mentioned as KM1990 tries to suss out where Sehun was. 

Either way, he was running out of time before help would prove futile. 

It had been around ten minutes after Chanyeol had picked the front door’s lock and it was safe to assume Jongdae’s place had been pretty much turned upside down and put back again (Chanyeol may have hated his friend for not being there in a time of need but he wasn’t so much of a savage that he was going to leave the place looking like a bomb had gone off). 

He stands in the middle of the living room with his hands buried deep in the pockets of his bomber jacket, letting out a rather long sigh of exasperation. 

_If I were Jongdae, where would I put it?_ He thinks to himself. 

It literally clicks at that precise moment after an alteration of thought. He can actually hear the cogs in his mind click into place as though he had been waiting for this the entire time he had been looking. 

“Of _course._ ” 

Chanyeol mumbles aloud, although his whisper had been relatively quiet it still echoes in the large room. He shuffles out of the living area, practically sprinting down the hallway to reach where he knew Jongdae’s bedroom would be. 

The door is basically kicked open in a desperate last spurt of energy to save Sehun. 

"He’s probably been watching porn.” 

Sure enough, Chanyeol’s laptop is sitting comfortably on Jongdae’s bed with the charger attached at the plug socket where the plug for the bedside light usually sat, the little light that was beside the charging port illuminating most of the room with a brilliant green light. As if to prove Chanyeol’s further knowledge of the porn situation, there is a box of suspiciously placed tissues to accompany the scene and on the bedside table, there is the dazzling presence of hand lotion. 

It would take a lot of effort for Chanyeol to act surprised, and back in the day, he was a theater kid. 

Although he _is_ surprised at Jongdae’s lack of imagination. Using a friend’s laptop to watch porn? That’s a new kind of low. 

The tall boy practically dives onto the bed, not caring that he wasn’t at home to complete the mission Sehun had given him. His rescue quest now was underway, having accidentally delayed it for too long already. 

He pushes the tissues out of the way to make more room for himself on the bed, thinking as he does so how Jongdae might be one of those ‘sex addicts’ you hear about on TV. 

Should he call Dr. Phil? 

He decides to give it the once over with Sehun tomorrow at Jongdae’s birthday party. 

_Shit._

He forgot to put the cake in the fridge. 

The thought of making another bloody cake sounds about as appealing as lighting himself on fire. He decides he’ll just buy one from the corner store later, who even needs baking? 

Chanyeol'shands are shaking with anticipation as he opens the lid of his laptop, the power immediately turning on and the loading page lighting up the darkened look of determination on his features. 

However, he’s so engrossed in the laptop, he doesn’t notice the window being opened to the right of the bed he was sitting on. 

It’s slowly pulled open, and two feet slip into the apartment and land skilfully on the top of Jongdae’s dresser. The left foot accidentally comes into contact with a bottle of deodorant and sends it crashing to the floor loudly, which in turn captures Chanyeol’s attention from the bed and his login screen. 

The tall boy suppresses the urge to scream as someone slim and petite settles themselves on top of Jongdae’s dresser which sits under the window, the window right next to the fire escape. Chanyeol watches with wide eyes, feels the blood drain from his face and his stomach drop ten feet as the person’s true form comes into view. 

It'S a slim college student with floppy hair. The floppy-haired guy has a tourniquet wrapped around what Chanyeol presumes to be a wound, and upon closer inspection, he can see blood seeping through the material and dyeing the original white colour to a deep crimson red. The possible ax murderer is also notably shirtless from what Chanyeol can see in the light from the fire escape, and he looks somewhat muscular. 

Despite being faced with his inevitable doom and sad demise surrounded by jerking off equipment at the hands of a stranger covered in blood, Chanyeol cannot bring himself to move an inch. He remains frozen, like he's waiting for death. 

All he can do is watch in horror and wait for the murderer to pull out his large machete, then presumably start cutting off his limbs whilst doing a vlog and post it on a dark web YouTube channel. 

He holds his breath, the light from his laptop lighting his face. 

The floppy-haired guy jumps down from the dresser and addresses the window behind him whilst subconsciously gripping his arm, not even aware of Chanyeol’s presence in the room. 

It's only as the guy smirks, in what Chanyeol assumes is a smirk identifying he was proud of himself for breaking in so stealthily, and turns casually to take in the room that he spots Chanyeol staring at him from the bed. 

The guy jumps noticeably backward, hitting the wardrobe doors behind him and making them clatter unfortunately loud. His mouth opens as he yells a little in surprise. Chanyeol still stares, but he works up the courage to move further up the bed in the opposite direction of the murderer, it was a reassuring thing to see his brain hadn't died before the rest of him yet. 

Upon seeing someone else in the room, the boy lets a look of relief wash over his face. 

“Jongdae, thank god you’re home, I'm having a crisis. I called but you weren't picking u-” 

The floppy-haired guy begins talking quickly, his voice a little raspy and mildly out of breath. He was clearly so shocked by Chanyeol’s presence he doesn't register that the person sitting on the bed might not be the person who lives there. 

He cuts himself off and squints into the darkness to get a closer look at Chanyeol, noticing for the first time that he wasn't in fact Jongdae. 

“Wait,” the floppy haired guy mumbles, still moving closer and scanning Chanyeol's face rather intrusively, “I don't remember fucking _you_ last night. Who are you?” 


	2. Chapter 2

The only thing that Chanyeol can manage to do is set the laptop down to the side with slow and paced out movements. He moved as though he might spook the murderer like he were a gazelle in a grazing field, not someone stood in someone else’s upmarket apartment uptown.

He doesn’t take his eyes off the guy at the end of the bed out of pure fear. He realises his eyes are embarrassingly wide with fear at this stage. 

He wasn’t one to pull a poker face, in fact, he doubted he even had one.

The lack of poker face makes it harder not to cringe away in fear as the guy inches a little closer, probably because Chanyeol still hasn't responded. The movement of the other person in the room only puts Chanyeol more and more on edge. Plucking up the courage, he manages to get his thoughts into some kind of order rather than just mashed together hopelessly in his brain.

 _”I didn’t fuck **you** last night,” _ is all that’s swimming around in his mind. 

It clicks after another second of thinking to see what had been in front of him all along. Quite literally actually. Even in the dim lighting (plus the poor eyesight that Chanyeol had been blessed with), he could see a blurry version of what he would define as Jongdae’s ‘type’. 

The boy who stood at the end of the bed with blood dripping from his arm was exactly Jongdae's go-to-for-sex kind of guy. The murderer had soft light brown hair from what Chanyeol could gauge at this distance. He had sharp cheekbones when his head was tilted at the right angle, the look being coupled with a lean yet muscular body that somehow didn’t suit his voice.

It was no surprise Jongdae had taken this guy home last night. He was probably out there now still bragging about it if Chanyeol knew him at all.

“Um.” 

Chanyeol notes that he never responded, once again lost in his own mind.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

“W-who are _you_?” 

He glows with pride on the inside, almost as bright as the sun itself. He managed to choke out a sentence that could be vaguely defensive and confrontational - and for that he was proud. Confrontation was Chanyeol's worst downfall after all. Murderers weren’t exactly the best people to confront when you wanted some kind of practice for it.

Maybe it wasn’t all bad. 

Maybe he wasn’t as bad at this ‘mingling with others’ thing as he had first anticipated.

The murderer shuffles back slightly as if he were in retreat, a feature of a small smirk playing on his face like some kind of sick game. It causes his face (or what Chanyeol could see of it) to light up ever so slightly, despite the smirk not being a particularly friendly one. It holds the sense that the murderer hadn’t taken to being talked back to when he had asked a question.

Oh _great._

Maybe things weren’t looking up after all.

“Nice one. Proud of yourself, are you?” The floppy-haired guy chides in, his eyes no longer fixated on Chanyeol. His gaze was beginning to flicker and focus on every bit of furniture in the room. 

Chanyeol watches him, his own breath trapped in his chest and refusing to budge or make room for a fresh one. Every fibre of his being stays tensed and taut, watching the murderer’s gaze with apprehension. He has no idea what to expect next, he's been completely thrown off guard.

He stays still, not wanting to set the bomb off.

The 'bomb' in question was currently turning his body to look at the space behind him that he hadn’t yet scanned. He was no longer interested in Chanyeol, deciding to direct his attention to search for something instead.

Chanyeol considers he’s looking for a weapon to beat him with. Or perhaps something to throw in his direction. Maybe even something to steal.

The guy continues prowling around the edge of the bed and into the corners of the room, a hint of uncertainty in his movements. An uncertainty which he didn’t have when he had swung in through the open window and slipped off of the dresser.

It occurs to Chanyeol then that his own question had not been answered. He supposes it was only fair, he was the one who had rejected the question first. 

“Why are you here then?” 

Chanyeol nearly lets out a yell of surprise when he realises he was the one that had spoken first. He must have been caught off guard and had spoken in the heat of the moment, although this was a rare occasion. In his defence, he wasn’t always there to witness a robbery/murder taking place. As such, he decides to forgive himself for being a little rash.

The dude turns his head to look at Chanyeol from the left corner of the room behind the dresser and the open window. He was beginning to initiate the motion of bending his knees to get a better look behind the furniture. When Chanyeol speaks, he turns his head back to respond. However, all that could be seen was his eyes, the tip of his nose and the rest covered by a half bony, half broad shoulder. 

The guy laughed coldly, something that wasn’t warm or humorous at all and left a chill running through the air. 

“So you aren’t going to die of fright. Wow, you could have fooled me.” 

Chanyeol feels himself sit up a little straighter indignantly. 

He wasn’t scared.

_Well..._

“What does it matter to you anyways, Buttercup?” The floppy-haired guy draws himself away from looking at Chanyeol, of whom was now perched on the end of the bed and a little more alert. The guy continues rummaging around on the floor, even getting on his knees and scrambling about behind the dresser. 

At the horrid pet name, Chanyeol stands with so much force he nearly sends his laptop flying. He grips it in his hands and presses it to his chest for some kind of warm support, ultimately closing the lid and abandoning the mission. He didn’t know who this guy was, but the guy didn’t need to to know that the nickname made his face feel hot and his large frame feel a little out of place. If any pet names actually suited him, it most definitely wasn’t ‘Buttercup’.

Perhaps ‘sunshine’ he considers subconsciously. 

The guy on the floor begins to rise as Chanyeol stalks over from his standing position beside the bed. This was Jongdae’s apartment, he wasn’t going to let some one-night-stand barge in here and take over - no matter how shit scared he might feel.

Floppy-haired Dude rises to his full height as Chanyeol moves to fall into the step in front of him. The dude's eyes were still trained on the ground and searching for _something_.

“Buttercup?” He says somewhat disgruntled and low under his breath so the guy doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t attempt to mask some of his bubbling anger at the situation or even his confusion as to what was going on. He’s such a mess of emotion and fear he finds himself dipping an octave lower with his already deep voice. His brain was screaming at him for some answers or else he was going to implode with confusion. 

The mere act of being confused seemed to rattle his cage. One thing he hated more than anything else was being out of the loop. 

_Perhaps this was a prank,_ he considers. He scans the boy in front of him with urgency. It was as if he expected the Floppy-haired Guy to be holding a whoopee cushion and a rubber chicken like an expert prankster. Maybe this was just Jongdae and Sehun screwing with him. Did he miss a memo of some kind? 

The murderer side steps Chanyeol without even throwing him a second glance. His bandaged arm ‘accidentally’ sliding by Chanyeol’s own and knocking it with surprising force as he walked by. 

Chanyeol felt a little more superior in the situation when he realised the guy's elbow had brushed past his forearm, almost near his wrist. The height difference would have been laughable if Chanyeol didn’t feel incredibly vulnerable and in danger at that moment.

 _Where was Jongdae when you needed him?_ Chanyeol decides that he might just die of relief if Jongdae where to come home at that very moment. At least Chanyeol’s breaking in was justified, he was clutching his laptop in his hands after all.

“To answer your question.” The Floppy-haired guy begins with an airy voice like he couldn’t really be bothered whether Chanyeol tried to stop him moving through the flat or not. “I’m here to take back something I left here last night.” 

Chanyeol had to do a full 180 to see the guy opening Jongdae’s bedroom door and meandering out into the hallway. 

When Chanyeol had entered the apartment, he had conveniently left the hallway light on. He had said at the time the purpose of this was so he could move through the rooms with ease in search of his laptop. It was also so he could feel less like a criminal slinking around in the dark hallways of someone else’s apartment. Yet now the light in the hallway didn’t seem so convenient. If anything the light now felt like a catastrophic mistake, a mistake which was leading the guy right into whatever rooms he pleased. Thanks to Chanyeol's 'convenience', the guy was able to see Jongdae's belongings that could feature in a robbery, either before or after he murdered Chanyeol.

He follows the other murderer hopelessly into the hallway, trailing in his wake like some kind of guard puppy that didn’t know how to guard very well. If anything he was overseeing that this heist went well for the criminal, giving him pointers and advice on how to rob his best friend’s apartment.

“Last night?” Chanyeol asks bewildered, his voice still a little timid as he falls into the step behind the Floppy-haired Guy. The both of them began to meander into the living room as though they both lived there.

“Yeah, last night.” He retorts, sounding distracted but mildly irritated. His eyes were still trained on the ground as his eyes searched for something in particular in between Jongdae’s sofas and armchairs. “Jongdae and I fucked last night. We met at some shitty party.” 

Chanyeol rolls his eyes very deliberately as though Jongdae could see him doing it. He hopes the spirit of his disgust lingers in the apartment for when Jongdae eventually arrives back home. His best friend was always ending up at parties that had all the wrong kinds of people at them. As a result, it had earned him his easy-lay reputation. 

Honestly, it was like he had no boundaries. Chanyeol and Sehun often wondered if a time would come when Jongdae would learn to just keep it in his pants.

They’d come to a conclusion long ago that such an event was most unlikely.

Floppy-haired Guy continued, “and I’m now looking for my keys and-”

He cuts himself off abruptly. Chanyeol can tell from the way his back muscles had tensed when he’d walked further into the room that it was something embarrassing.

Despite how much Chanyeol didn’t want to be near this guy due to his unpredictability, he couldn't help but let the corners of his mouth twitch up in a smirk. It’s gone as soon as it came though, he doesn’t want to let this guy think he’s won this battle. 

Chanyeol may have been shitting his sweatpants, but he wasn’t going to let the apartment get robbed while he stood back and watched.

Well, he _was_ currently watching the dude move through the room, his hands all over the furniture and personal items. But for arguments sake, he wasn’t technically stealing anything so Chanyeol didn’t see much harm in letting him get on with it. The dude was lifting cushions as he searched for his keys and whatever the other thing was, Chanyeol merely watching him. Although the taller boy was still intimidated, the thought that this guy was here to kill him specifically didn’t seem plain. 

It didn’t stop him thinking that a possible murder may be on the cards, but it didn’t appear to be the number one priority. 

“Ah-ha!” 

-

 

Baekhyun’s hands rub over the soft material of the sofa, patting blindly in the dark room on every bit of furniture he could touch. This was turning into some kind of blind attempt to find his pants. 

He’s about to give up with moving the cushions on the sofa when his hands come into contact with satin material. Mildly sticky and crusty in places kind of satin material. 

What did he even do in those pants last night? 

It worries him further that he can’t actually remember the full ins and outs of the situation. 

How drunk was he?

In the moment of joy that Baekhyun had been blessed with, he yanks his pants out of the groove in the cushions. He wields them above his head as he makes a noise of relief and waves them in some kind of makeshift flag of victory. 

He’s about to shout something along the lines of _”thank fuck”_ when he’s suddenly _very_ aware of another presence in the room.

Baekhyun wheels around, rising to his feet mid-motion and casually stuffing the underpants into his back pocket. He ensures his keys are falling into the pocket and not onto the floor (he doesn’t want to leave here and return to do this rigmarole all over again - no thank you, not today, not ever again). 

The boy from the bed is looking at him with wide eyes and a mild look of terror on his face. Baekhyun almost feels bad, he must look something of a right sight. Blood all over his body and no shirt, no underpants and messy hair. Not to mention he looks fucked out from the mediocre adventures of last night. Also good to note was that he's dripping with sweat from climbing the fire escape nine floors and then some.

Damn, that look of terror was absolutely justified.

They look at each other for a minute, staring back at one another as they both wait for something to happen. For someone to say something. For _anything_ to change the atmosphere.

Although the lighting is dark, Baekhyun knows that the boy in front of him is shitting himself or thinking about shitting himself. Which like he had said before, was completely justifiable. 

What a weird situation.

Baekhyun, who was obviously the one most likely to break the tension, moves his jaw and relaxes his body. The words on the tip of his tongue are about to _try_ and be a bit more polite considering he’d been nothing but abrupt since he had entered through the window.

This poor dude had been sitting on the bed having an innocent jerk off when he had heroically swept through the entryway. How rude of him to interrupt.

He opens his mouth, words of thanks and apology on his tongue to soothe the scared boy. 

And, he almost gets the chance to speak those words, if it wasn’t for the woman in the apartment below.

The floor beneath them bangs with force, some of the items on the glass coffee table rattling about and creating noise. A picture frame fell face down onto the wooden floorboards, smashing from the fall.

Baekhyun’s eyes widen when the banging continues. The epicentre of the vibration appeared to start right between his left foot and the boy from the bed’s right one. The two boys looked down at the exact spot where the vibration was coming from, the noise being from something bashing against the apartment below’s ceiling. It had enough force for them to feel the sound bouncing off every wall in the apartment.

If the boy from the bed wasn’t terrified before, he was practically swimming in a pool of his own tears by now. 

The look the taller one gives Baekhyun is a sudden jerk of the head, and even from across the room Baekhyun can tell that his eyes are wide with fear. The boy's body is most probably trembling with the adrenaline of the situation. 

Oh shit.

The woman he had bumped into on the landing. Did she live in the apartment below?

The banging stops, giving time for there to be a shout from below in accented Chinese. “Breaking into an apartment building? I’ve called the cops!” Or something along those lines, Baekhyun’s heart is pounding in his ears so loud it's hard for him to concentrate. 

If he’s certain on one thing it’s that he _definitely_ heard the word ‘cops’. In any situation, especially one like this one, it was most likely not a good thing. 

_Double_ oh shit. 

Baekhyun, who was still ready to spout something half funny and half teasing, can now only manage to rudely spit out a comment of hypocritical disgust. “You broke in?” 

The banging resumes, purposefully interrupting a possible continuation of conversation. Even though Baekhyun’s thought process isn’t even all there, he’s sure the woman is using a mop/brush to create the racket. The taller boy looks down at his feet as though it were him who was making the noise. Upon discovering that it was the woman below them and not him, he looks back up and is paralysed with fear. 

Baekhyun takes a cautious step towards him very gingerly. It’s only because the tall boy is so alert that he registers Baekhyun's movements at all, counteracting them. He takes a very obvious but equally timid movement backwards. 

The banging continues and it’s coupled with the thrum of adrenaline in Baekhyun’s veins, only spurring on the awful headache he was soon to endure. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

The silence on the other boy’s part seems to answer Baekhyun’s question. 

So they’d both broken in, for what reason on the other guy’s behalf Baekhyun was still unaware of. He’s about to open his mouth and ask the question when he realises two things. One- there was no point in asking such a complex question to someone who was on the verge of dying from fright. Two- the banging on the floorboards wasn’t the only noise filling the apartment.

_The corridor._

Both the taller boy and Baekhyun’s heads whip around in the direction of the noise at practically the same time. There’s a very obvious and very demanding sound of footsteps filling the apartment. As Baekhyun focuses on the sound closer, it sounds like more than one person. 

Baekhyun’s logical head was dissipating now, his mind fizzing with every possible outcome of this situation. He didn’t need to be arrested tonight, not tonight of all nights. He’d had a shitty day. He’d been wearing the same clothes for almost 48 hours. He hadn’t brushed his teeth since sucking Jongdae off that morning, a fact which was proved by his breath. 

And it didn’t help that Minseok was at that convention, so if he did get arrested he’d have no one to pay his bail. 

No. 

No way was he getting arrested tonight.

The footsteps outside were growing louder, the group of what Baekhyun could only assume to be officers were marching through the nearest corridors. They’d be on the door of Jongdae’s apartment in moments. It was little to no time at all until they’d be right on top of them.

The taller boy in front of Baekhyun looks at him like a lost puppy looking for a solution to the situation. Like Baekhyun held all the answers and could help him. His eyes are wide and he’s hopping from foot to foot as the lady beneath them continues to bang with her brush against the ceiling. Even though there’s close to no light in the apartment, Baekhyun could see that the taller boy was scrunching his eyes closed and his face was turning red.

Baekhyun had never been a warm person, it wasn’t in his nature or his characteristics to be like that. So for him to feel a strong sense - _no_ \- an urge to help this guy out here...it was a huge deal.

And it was an identity crisis problem that he’d much rather consider later on and definitely _not now_.

The officers were at the end of the floor corridor now if Baekhyun’s hearing was accurate. 

They had seconds to think of something.

He looks around for a solution, a way out, something, Jesus fucking Christ _anything_. 

Then, his eyes gaze to the window.

Baekhyun’s feet move so quickly underneath him that he almost skids on the rug beneath his dress shoes and falls flat on his face. He braces himself on the coffee table to prevent a fall, his body devoted to hurling himself at the window.

The taller boy jumps back startled but Baekhyun barely spares him a second glance. His hands are already reaching out and tugging desperately on the window to open it.

It swings open on the third tug, Baekhyun being almost 97% sure he’d broken the latch on it so now it would remain permanently opened.

At the door, there’s a very demanding knock from a fist on the other side of the wood. 

With the window open Baekhyun hauls himself up to the ledge and swings his legs over so he sits uncomfortably on the grills of the fire escape. His entire body is now acting on impulse as he stands with surprising speed. He’s about to set off up the fire escape, slapped with the icy cold blast of wind as he stands and readies himself to set off into the night and hopefully towards home. This all sounds like an achievable plan. That is until he notices that he also had another odd duty he’d set himself.

He bends down so he’s level with the window again, his breezy pants situation not feeling any better. He thinks the button has popped off his jeans but does is best to ignore this fact. He realises as he looks into the apartment and subtly moves a hand to rest in front of the crotch area, that his zipper is acting as the only barrier between the world and his cock. 

Not a problem now, if his cock does pop out and as long as the police don’t catch him he doesn’t care.

The taller boy, whom his self-duty concerns, is staring at Baekhyun as he looks back at him from the fire escape. There’s still the heavy knocking on the door but the woman beneath Jongdae’s apartment seems to have ceased her threats and had put down her mop. The semi-silence between each knock is enough for Baekhyun to hear the taller boy’s panicked breathing from outside. 

“I don’t know who you are dude but if you stay in there you’re going to get arrested and it’ll look fucking dodgy okay? I don’t want to leave y-”

Baekhyun’s rambling. His body is running on pure adrenaline and the desire not to be arrested with his cock about to fall out his jeans. He’s about to throw in the towel and very nearly leave the taller boy there due to lack of response, their time growing thin.

There's the sound of the police hitting the door with something a little heavier than a fist that fills the apartment. It seems to be all the tall boy needs. He begins sprinting across the living room and diving through the window so he falls onto the fire escape in one swift move. 

Baekhyun almost gets taken down with him but luckily he falls back onto the steps of the black metal fire escape in time. He breathes out through his nose sharply but does his best to keep the look of surprise from his face. He was calm, collected and cool. He was. He _was_. 

There’s a crash from the apartment doorway and he knows for a fact that the officers had broken the door down. He’d seen it done in the movies but never to this extent. It was usually in a drug deal, not to catch a break in. 

Maybe the lady beneath Jongdae had thought Baekhyun was there to murder Jongdae instead of stealing his own goddamn underwear back.

Then he considers how much easier this situation would have been if he HAD gone there to kill Jongdae. At least then he wouldn’t have had to deal with the frightened string bean that looked like he was about to collapse if someone burst a paper bag near his head.

Not even taking a look behind him, Baekhyun begins to surge up the stairwell with elongated strides, taking two steps at a time. He’s not in the mood to be cornered today. He’s had a shitty enough day as it is, his freezing cold cock that’s a little too limp in his jeans can testify to that.

He doesn’t look back to see if the taller boy was following his lead. Baekhyun knows that he’s paving the way for the other boy (who was on his tail if his senses were telling him right). The taller guy was bounding up the stairs after him, his breath loud and obvious even above the roaring of the wind. He’s heavy footed too, not exactly built for stealth.

They continue moving. Baekhyun's trying to take four steps in one go despite his legs being pretty short for an average guy of his age. His mind is absorbed in the way his heartbeat sounds irregular, his entire body thrumming on negative energy. He’d much rather be at home sipping some green tea than doing this.

If only he had a spare key.

Baekhyun continues moving for some time, only realising that to escape they- _he_ had chosen to climb upwards instead of down. His thought process was out of whack at this stage so he doesn’t blame himself for being a bit of an idiot. 

As the last couple of steps drew nearer in his eyeline, he was becoming increasingly more aware of a problem. Said problem being that when they were on the roof, they had nowhere to _fucking go_. 

About four floors down, Baekhyun can hear the sound of pounding feet moving in single file up the stairwell. Baekhyun was no James Bond, but he could tell there were at least four police officers on the stairs now. 

And they were going straight up towards them. 

_Them_.

One quick glance over Baekhyun's shoulder tells him that Lanky was still following behind obediently - albeit rather clumsily. Baekhyun could hear his heavy footfalls even over the roar of the wind in his ears.

Baekhyun jogged over the last step, his feet landing firmly on the concrete helipad of the roof. Unfortunately the lanky guy behind him had misjudged how small the step was, almost falling backwards. He had to reach out in reaction to keep himself upright and not fall to his death down the metal stairwell. 

Well maybe not _death_ but it would have been something worse.

The boy flailed hopelessly in mid fall, attempting to grab onto Baekhyun who was only a few inches in front of him. Due to Baekhyun being shirtless and without leverage for the boy to grip onto, he gripped onto Baekhyun’s hips instead in a moment of panic.

The long fingers that were adorned with callouses gripped the smooth skin of Baekhyun’s hips that poked out of the top of his jeans. He would have otherwise thought he were in some kind of club where someone couldn’t resist touching him. It was known to happen, but not on the rooftop of an apartment building when they were being pursued by cops. 

He surges forwards so he’s walking into the centre of the helipad; the wind rushing into his face. It hits with such force his eyes begin to water at the exposure. The makeshift tourniquet around his arm flaps about in the wind, the material making the whip and crack much like a flag. 

The gusts of wind cause Baekhyun’s already ruffled hair to fall across his face, whipping the tops of his cheekbones and eyes. This ordeal began distorting his vision somewhat so he was at a clear disadvantage. 

However, he can see it clearly, even from the center of the roof.

A flash of brass buttons and black uniforms, the caps visible from the gaps in the stairwell. 

They’re closing in.

He uses a hand to pin his long fringe back out of his eyes and in doing so, turns around to focus his attention to Lanky. 

He has to incline his head upwards, and at any other time he would have complained at doing so because it hurt his neck. With more pressing matters on hand he decides to let it slide this once, cursing his shortness silently. Now was the last time in the world to complain about something so menial.

Baekhyun’s heart does a quick thump against his ribcage. Now, in the light pollution of the city, he could see the lanky boy’s face a little better than he had been able to before. 

Wide brown eyes, laced with fear. 

The boy kept glancing from Baekhyun with expectation to the edges of the helipad where the concrete dropped off. It seemed as though the edges of the helipad were getting closer and closer to where they stood in the centre. Baekhyun just hoped it wasn't hinting that soon they’d be falling off of it, completely helpless.

Baekhyun needs to get them both out of this because clearly the other boy had never been in a situation like this in his entire life. Baek somehow felt the need to get the other boy out of it so he never _would_ experience it in the foreseeable future.

He runs a hand through his messy hair, pivoting on the spot as he desperately tried to find a solution.

He’s looking at the surrounding buildings, looking at the distance to fall, looking at any spots to hide.

Wait.

_He has an idea._

“Freeze!” 

One of the cops makes it onto the roof before the others, furthering into unknown territory. He has an obvious nervous twitch and he keeps glancing behind himself, allowing Baekhyun to follow the gaze to the stairwell. It's not too much to presume the cop was anticipating his backup. The look of apprehension on the cop's face was enough to tell him that he was out of his depth reaching the crime scene first.

He had seconds to put his ‘idea’ into a plan or otherwise they were going to spend the night in a jail cell.

When Baekhyun hears more footsteps clattering on the steel of the stairwell, he knows that it’s practically no time at all before the handcuffs come out. Soon it'll be time for them to ‘put their hands behind their head’ and Baekhyun most certainly didn't want any of that.

Fuck making a plan, Baek decides, use the idea he has.

“Come on.”

Baek elbows the lanky one in the ribs (they’re standing close enough that this is easily maneuvered). He begins to walk in the opposite direction of the cop, towards the edge of the building which was opposite the stairwell. 

“I’m not sticking around to see how this plays out.” 

There’s reluctance in the way Lanky tries to keep rooted to the spot he was stood on, his eyes growing impossibly wider as time moves on. Surprisingly it’s here that Baekhyun realises the reluctance Lanky had with coming up to the roof. The way the taller one kept peering either side of where they stood as if he were trying to see how far up they were. Putting two and two together, Baek deduces that this boy is scared of heights. “But-” 

Although Baek feels a pang of guilt for not considering the boy’s situation, he comes off cold and emotionless like he usually did. 

“You can stay here if you want, I don’t want to get myself arrested.” 

The lanky one must agree that, yes, he too doesn’t want to be arrested just yet. Or ever. 

He begins to follow Baekhyun’s lead again and trails into the path behind him, watching his every movement. 

Behind them, the guard is yelling an order that neither of the two ‘fugitives’ hear over the roar of the wind. The gale cuts over the top of the building and whistles past their ears, cutting off sound.

Baekhyun wouldn’t have listened anyway.

They're a few meters from the edge, both their backs to the guard behind them. It's here that Baekhyun stops and, like clockwork, so does the lanky one.

“What’s your plan?” The lanky one calls over the sounds of the gale, trying to look Baekhyun in the eye but failing. Baek’s already so focused on the building opposite where they stand that he can’t bring himself to answer. It turns out an answer isn’t even required, the look Baekhyun was giving the building opposite is enough for Lanky to put two and two together. 

“No fucking _way_ are you even going to-” 

Behind Baekhyun and the tall boy, there's the other voices of the officers and they’re all apparently on the roof now. They're calling orders to them over the roar of the wind, both of them still having no idea what they were saying.

So, following his original idea and knowing how stupid and ludicrous it was, he starts running.

And even now, he’s acutely aware of his cock moving and jiggling mercilessly in his pants.

“Hey-!” 

The lanky one cries, trying to grab onto Baekhyun’s shoulder as he makes a break for it. Despite the length of the other's limbs, he fails miserably as Baekhyun slips out of his fingers with ease. 

He’s running desperately, bolting it so fast that the hair is pushed out of his eyes despite the wind mashing together around him. It seemed to be coming from all directions, but causing enough kerfuffle to allow him a clear view of the stupid act he was about to commit. 

The shouts of the police officers drain out of Baekhyun’s ears like water, trickling away till all he can hear is the thumping of his heart against his rib cage. The mere concept of his plan running through his mind that was rather concisely just: _’oh shit'_. 

And then, his toes brush over the edge of the concrete. His body becomes somewhat weightless for those few precious seconds, feeling the adrenaline pump through his body quick as anything. 

He jumps.

It’s as though he’s having an outer body experience. His whole body is alive with the senses his adrenaline amplifies.

He’s jumping.

He sees the concrete beneath his feet disappear. For that split second it does, he feels the panic rise in his chest. It feels as though he were playing some extreme game of Operation with his friends when they’d gotten a little bit too drunk and everything seemed too real. Too serious.

But this isn't just about dropping the item from the tweasers like in stupid Operation. 

If he dropped, that was it.

Dead.

_Fin._

There’s nothing beneath him. All he can see is the darkness of an abyss-like alleyway that lined the two buildings that he was now becoming very familiar with. To his left, he could see the lights of the traffic on the main road that whizzed down the Avenue. His heart was somehow pumping faster than the engine of the loud Mercedes that shot down the avenue, his eyes watching it as though he were in slow motion. 

He’s gliding.

He reaches the pinnacle, the zenith of his jump. 

It seems like he stops in mid air for the minutest second, his body vibrating with the energy he had acquired. All that energy accumulated from risking his life to escape with his fucking underwear.

It's brief though.

Because then, he’s falling.

It begins to happen all at once. His body weight finally begins catching up to him and plummeting him straight back down to earth with a harsh slap of reality. He knows now, as he feels his arms flailing out on both sides and a bend in his knees that shouldn’t be there if he’s going to land this jump right, that he _really, totally_ didn’t think this through. 

The sound from the rooftop is now catching up to him too, as though his ears had been shocked into working again.

He can hear the cries of concern from the boy he had acquired in the apartment. Ironically, he could now sense the danger the boy had been concerned about before Baek had jumped across the gap. 

Baekhyun’s also becoming aware he was going to come crashing down onto the nearest surface rather soon. Whether that be the rooftop of the building he was aiming for or the fucking ground (which was a long long way down to say the least) he wasn't sure. 

The height of his jump decreases quickly, his arms fold in on his body as he realises with some miraculous triumph that _yes_ he was actually going to make it onto the other building. That is if he used a little bit of man power to hoist himself up just the slightest bit more-

He hits the top of the building with a harsh smack, but he braces the impact on his shoulder like he had seen in all the action movies thus far in his life. He finds that although it hurts like a bitch, it doesn’t feel as though he’s broken anything. His face is all scraped by asphalt and is practically ground into the floor of the other building’s rooftop structure. But...but he’s _alive._

Baekhyun, once he had slowed from the impact of his drop and roll, stands with speed to see the situation in hand. 

The boy with the too-long arms and the too-long legs is staring back at him, fear plastered onto every inch of his face. His hair whipping across his face just like Baekhyun’s had been moments ago. 

Lanky’s scared of heights.

Baek doesn’t want to leave the lanky boy to defend for himself against the police, but he doesn't know what else to do. In a last resort, he tries something he never considered he would ever do with his personality and being.

He tries reassurance.

“You’ll be fine.” He starts, having to shout impossibly loud in order for the other boy to hear him over the distance between them. The shouting itself didn’t sound very reassuring when considering the drop between the buildings and distance between the sides. “Do what I did!” 

_Which would be fine,_ Baekhyun considers, _if I actually knew how to do what I did again without falling to my death._

The police officers are visible behind the other boy and Baekhyun’s trying to think of a way to coax Lanky to just fucking leap and not give a shit whether he dies or not. However from their brief encounter thus far, Baekhyun’s managed to deduce that this is not a very rational way of thinking on behalf of the other. Lanky is waiting for help, and help doesn't seem to be coming.

One look to Baekhyun’s left would show the doorway down to the lower floors of the building, and by the looks of it had never been locked properly. It would be a breeze to kick down and escape from the fuzz on the other side of this horrific nightmare.

But if he did that, he’d be doing it alone.

Baekhyun looks back at the boy on the other roof, and can see the look of desperation in his eyes. If the boy’s mouth could open right now, however clamped by fear it may be, he would scream a string of curse words and a heartfelt plea. It only called for immediate action on Baekhyun’s part. 

The lanky boy is gripping at the sides of his sleeves and then releasing, only to repeat this sequence as he stares at Baekhyun. His eyes are so wide that he can see the entirety of the whites and all the colours in the centre. His knees are slightly bowed so he doesn’t stand to his full height and it makes him look even taller somehow, like he had to grow accustomed to the shorter people of his close associates. His soft ebony hair is falling into his eyes in an uneven triangle that brushes the tip of his nose, his cheeks reddened and flushed adorably by the wind.

And Baekhyun knows it’s totally not the time, but he can’t help but realise this guy is gorgeous.

He’s gorgeous.

No, really. He's _gorgeous_.

Something about the way the boy is looking at him is making Baekhyun feel like his heart is going through a shredder. Like it was being ripped from his chest and thrown down the drop in the buildings between them.

He cannot move for the pain he feels in his heart.

All Baekhyun does is stare back at him with an unreadable expression on his face, studying the boy who stands across from him, shaking. And not with the chill in the wind.

The boy is desperate and so, so afraid.

And Baekhyun cannot bare to leave him.

Not like this.

No matter how close he is to tasting his freedom away from this mess with his stained boxers. It wasn’t exactly a dignified trophy he’d be walking away with anyways.

One glance over the lanky boy’s shoulder alerts Baekhyun that the police officers are advancing onto the boy still left on the rooftop. One of them is already pulling the handcuffs from the sheath at his side. The lanky boy doesn’t hear the jangle of the metal over the sound of the wind rushing past his ears and the sound of his own heartbeat. The very fact that he can’t focus on anything else but Baekhyun with those big glassy eyes that looks like he’s about to cry is too much. Maybe he’s windswept, maybe he’s broken inside. Either way he’s looking at Baekhyun like he holds all the answers.

He wishes he did.

If it meant the painful look on the other's face would go away, he'd do it in a heartbeat.

 _What the fuck?_ He didn't even know this guy.

Before Baekhyun can register what he’s doing, his feet are already causing him to step back a bit. He’s bracing himself into a running position and, before his mind can comprehend the matter at hand, he starts to run.

In the direction of the opposite building.

Again.

He’s running back to the lanky boy. He's running back because apparently Baekhyun had taken it upon himself to care about this stranger a little more than he should do.

Couldn’t he have left his underwear and keys?

His feet are a blur beneath him. The adrenaline is returning to his body once more and the pulse in his throat going a dime to the dozen. He feels, oddly enough, like he’s dreaming. The thought process he had once had now dissipating into the gust of wind carrying him over the space over the gap. His hair was being  
pushed back from his face once more, exposing the look of fear that probably lay on his features.

His legs flail beneath him, his arms spreading out and above his head like an angel of death coming back for revenge. The empty feeling beneath his feet seems to increase in size and with time he feels that heart attack coming on. 

He isn't going to make it.

His heart is hammering in his chest. His eyes are widening as he thinks he feels himself beginning to drop from the height he had reached at the summit of his jump.

The flailing of his limbs above his head ceases as his entire body is focused on the platform of the roof opposite. The lanky boy stands watching him with wide eyes and a small gape to the mouth with his lips parted in a perfect ‘O’ shape. 

His arms stretch out as he _really_ feels a significant drop in the height he had managed to gain from the run up. He can feel his body dipping into the abyss of darkness beneath his dress shoes. Panic must have flashed across his face at that moment because the lanky boy was already running to the edge, reaching his hands out to try and save Baekhyun from falling. Trying to hoist him over. Trying to catch him.

Everything seems to move in slow motion as Baekhyun’s vision of the police officers seems to dip from their eye level, then to their chests and then to their knees and _oh shit now we’re at shoe level_. 

Baekhyun’s moving his arms out as far as they could go, his fingertips beginning to come into contact with the soft skin of the boy with the height phobia. 

His feet and knees smack into the brick and scrape as he skids down the side of it with excruciating pain, letting out a yelp.

Baekhyun’s body begins to really feel the impact of the fall, his body desperately trying to find something to cling onto to save himself from his death. He's starting to get frantic when he feels hands claw at his shoulders; gripping onto his forearm and hoisting him up as far as he could go without breaking anything. The hands around him are strong, sure and surprisingly supple. Not that Baekhyun had an awful lot of time to think about that in the present moment. 

The presence of the strong hands keeping him on the edge of falling seems to calm him marginally. His dress shoes are still scuttling up the side of the building and easily losing grip, his knees and jeans feeling wet with blood where he’s grazed his legs. As the panic begins to settle down ever so slightly, he realises he’s stopped falling.

He’s stationary.

His breath is coming out thick and ragged as he feels he had just brushed the hands of death. His chest is dramatically collapsing and inflating as though he were choking and couldn’t breathe, showing his distress.

He takes a moment to calm himself down. Those hands are still clutched onto his body and keeping him upright, teetering on the edge of the building. One hand is gripping onto his forearm, the other onto his underarm and attempting to keep him from the drop. 

When his breathing isn’t as bad as it was, Baekhyun manages to open one eye through the tight scrunch he had resorted to out of fear. The wind is raging in his ears and he has to suck another breath in when he comes eye to eye - almost nose to nose - with the lanky boy. 

And they’re right on the edge of the building. 

The lanky boy has his face scrunched in concentration and visible pain, his arms and hands shaking with the work his muscles were putting in. He’s groaning too, low and throaty as he tries to keep Baekhyun from falling to his death. His dark hair is still whipping at his face and the clothes he’s wearing are ruffling like that of a flag in the harsh winds. The dark hoodie he's wearing looking similar to the Jolly Roger.

In that moment Baekhyun decides it would be a good idea to help him out and regain control of the situation. Of his own body.

The way the boy was holding him allowed Baekhyun to clasp onto the boy in question and use him to hoist his legs up a little further. This allowed him to step onto the helipad of the apartment block once again for the second time that night.

He does so, and Lanky immediately lets out a sigh of relief (it’s actually something closer to a cry of relief, but because Baekhyun didn’t want to note how much he had taken offence - I mean surely he couldn’t be _that_ heavy - he lets it go). 

“You…” 

The lanky boy has his hands on his knees and his doubled over as he tries to catch his breath from acting like Superman. He’s shouting to be heard over the wind which seems to have picked up since they had first made it onto the helipad. Both of them are battling to stay completely upright on the height of the building, as are the police.

“You came back.” 

It’s all he says. He says it as he’s straightening up from the clutching of his abdominal muscles, his face coming into view.

Baekhyun’s studying the deep gashes on his knees and the rips in his jeans. He can't tear his eyes away from the broken soles of his shoes, cracked all over from the desperate rush to save himself. It meant that his toes were cool with the freezing air that seeps in. 

He looks up as he hears the words, coming eye level with the lanky boy once more.

The boy looks bewildered, and beyond surprised; his eyes comically wide. So much so that he could even make out the different shades of chocolate and hazel that circled the irises. 

Out of a sudden flush of embarrassment as Baek realised he was staring, he looks back down at his feet. He finds that he quickly has something to focus his attention on when he’s in need of a distraction. 

The police are advancing.

They’re all stood in a line formation and are closing in quick. Their arms were outstretched at their sides in case one of them tries to make a break for the stairwell in a desperate plea for escape.

Baekhyun feels the tense and drawn line of his shoulder blades relax.

The game was up.

All too quickly do the police reach the pair who stand on the brink of the drop off point. They’re standing almost shoulder to shoulder and look neutral in the knowledge they don’t have anywhere to run now. They know it would be best to take their punishment. 

Yet, they differ in the fact that whilst the lanky boy is staring at Baekhyun as though Baekhyun would turn around and explain himself the longer he stared (which _wasn’t_ going to happen, Baek was stubborn), Baekhyun was looking at his beaten dress shoes in defeat. He couldn’t lift his head out of shame. He didn't even look up when one of the police officers neared him and yanked his hands into a suitable handcuffing position behind his back. Another was invading his personal space to read him the police caution rather patronisingly.

“You are both being charged with breaking and entering a private property,” 

The click of the handcuffs locking into place seems to justify the experience. It made it seem that much more pressing.

Minseok was going to kill him when he got back from that convention tonight.

“You do not have to say anything.” The police officer in his face continues, his voice harsh and throaty.

He could see that the lanky boy had been seized as well. He'd had his arms pulled roughly behind his back despite him showing no signs of resistance. He’s still looking over in Baek’s direction and he’s feeling the weight of the gaze on him like a ton of bricks. Those brown eyes were boring into his soul mercilessly.

“But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.” 

Baekhyun’s still looking at his shoes. Despite the chill in the nighttime air that was threatening to sweep him, lanky boy and all the police officers on the roof away, he feels his face heat up. He’s all too aware of how stupid he’s been, and he’s not even sat in the holding cell yet. 

“Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

There’s a pause.

And then, Baekhyun feels a sharp push onto his spine, causing him to stumble into a walk and begin to walk ahead to the stairwell. A police officer was locked firmly in place with the spare cuff that had been left from the arrest so Baekhyun didn’t try and make a break for it. Again. 

He’s trying to make light of the situation in his head, saying how he now has a cop buddy to accompany him everywhere like he was a first-class criminal.

 _All I wanted were my boxers and keys._ he groans internally, beginning the descent down the stairwell with his cop buddy in tow. 

He can hear the heavy-footed thudding of Lanky, and he feels the intense urge to bow his head down again to look at his feet. 

And he doesn’t know why.

-

Everything’s happening in a blur. 

In just ten minutes, Chanyeol had been pushed and ushered roughly down a frighteningly high stairwell all the way to the bottom. He had been made to _walk_ (almost like he was some kind of criminal) to the cop cars. He'd been pushed into the side of a car waiting for them on the pavement in full view of the passers by. People were now gathering around to watch the ‘criminal’ being shoved headfirst into the vehicle, the lights whirring round in a cycle of unflattering blue and red. He had also lost the button from the back pocket of his jeans at some point because he can _feel_ a hole in the pocket above his butt. 

The last thing he was worried about now was whether Sehun had made it out of that battle with his potions still in tact. 

The officers stand with their hands on their belts, of which are slung costume-looking kind of low. One officer was making notes in a small flip book and another two were asking what Chanyeol assumes to be the security people at the apartment desk. 

He can see the whole scene from the back window of the police car he was sat in. 

He can even see the floppy-haired murderer from earlier in the cop car behind him. The guy was sitting between the two front seats in the middle section. Chanyeol can see it through the plexiglass panels that separate the officers from the arrested.

He’s lounging in the back like all this wasn’t the worst thing to happen ever. He was looking cool and collected as he sat back in the plastic upholstery of the backseat, like it was made of the finest silk and duck feathers. His long bangs are hanging over his eyes like some kind of anime character. Chanyeol finds that even though he doesn’t know that man, he’s starting to grow weirdly fond of him already.

He hates it.

He hates the floppy-haired dude.

He hates himself for getting into this mess.

Chanyeol isn’t sure, but he’s convinced they had a brief brush of gaze whilst he was assessing him from the next cop car over. He quickly turns his eyes somewhere else to make it look like he was watching the police officers in front. 

He’s not focusing on the officers much at all and is trying to convince himself that he has bigger problems than the floppy-haired douchebag.

Chanyeol glances nervously to the cops, of whom are still talking to officials at the apartment block and taking down notes. They look like they’re still intently in discussion, so Chanyeol figures he has a moment to conclude what’s happened. He needs to be prepared to answer questions when the officers get back into the vehicle. 

He'll explain he knows the owner of the apartment and that he was going inside to retrieve his _own_ property from the porn-addicted thief who had forgotten to give it back. He decides it would be best to conveniently leave out the part about his best friend being in mortal danger online. 

That should be enough, right?

The driver side door pops open and Chanyeol’s smidgen of confidence dissipate out into the night traffic of the boulevard. He’s lost his bottle. 

Again.

Two of the four cops who were talking to the apartment manager outside the vehicle were now clambering into the front seats of the car. They began buckling up with speed and getting ready to transport the criminal - Chanyeol felt a marginally sick at the use of the word - to the station. 

As the cop on the driver’s side turns the key in the ignition, the other cop turns around in his seat to get a better look at the scared college student in the back of the car. Chanyeol doesn’t know, but the look of fear and embarrassment is plastered all over his face.

The officer that is looking at him with a hard and stern demeanour has his eyebrows creased in the middle. He's looking down the brim of his nose at Chanyeol, of who squirms uncomfortably on the plastic of the back seats. 

Chanyeol finds he can’t even put an age on the officer and somehow that makes him all the more intimidating.

“Alright kid-”

The officer starts, immediately being patronising. Before Chanyeol could endure anymore of his speech, the radio that sits on the front air vents rattles into life. Through the thick static Chanyeol hears what sounds like an instruction from the station for a police car to attend the suspected robbery happening on 54th Street, downtown. 

The officer in the driver’s seat groans in a deep thick voice, his shoulders rising and falling with the action. 

They must be having a long night.

The officer turns back to him, the one with the stern face and the thick eyebrows. He looks exasperated, and despite the situation Chanyeol feels a pang of sympathy for the man. 

“-I’m going to question you now before we get to the station because apparently everyone in this goddamn city is out committing felonies tonight and we don’t have time for the tedious work.” 

All Chanyeol can do is nod, he doesn’t trust his voice.

The officer, who Chanyeol knows was the one writing down what the apartment block manager was saying, flips open the notebook from before. He clicks the tip of his pen, still swivelled around in his seat to look at Chanyeol as the other officer pulls them onto the traffic of the boulevard.

“Name?” 

He swallows thickly, but his voice still comes out scratchy and shaky. 

“P-park Chanyeol.”

The officer must notice the obvious shake in his voice because he pauses halfway through writing the name out. He glances over at the lanky boy in the back with his hands clasped a little too tightly in his lap.

The officer chooses to ignore it, picking up his pen and starting again.

“Occupation?” 

“S-student.” 

“Where do you study?”

“Seoul N-national Univ-university.” 

“Can you tell me why you were at the scene of the crime tonight?” 

“I-I had to get my laptop. I know the owner of the apartment well, he’s a c-cl-close friend.” 

The officer stops writing again once he’s got the shorthand down. He continues to assess Chanyeol, of whom is still squirming under the gaze like it was cutting skin deep. 

Chanyeol doesn’t know where to look, his body shifting and swaying with the corners the cop car is taking down the streets to the station. There’s a definite shake in his hands and he feels his whole body vibrating, totally on edge.

His heart is in his mouth, his stomach somewhere back on the asphalt of the roadside outside Jongdae’s apartment building.

“You’re not a bad kid, I know that.” 

The officer says finally, and the statement causes Chanyeol to look the officer dead in the eye for the first time. Before that moment he had been swamped with shame, unable to think about anything but how much of a failure he was. 

_How could he get them caught?_

“You can tell when we cornered you on the roof, you looked like you were ready to collapse. You just got caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time, huh?” 

The officer in the front seat is putting away his pen and paper now, looking at Chanyeol like he was the most interesting and disappointing thing in the world. The line of his drawn together eyebrows was light and he looks like a father figure who was feeling the burden of punishing a young boy who didn’t really deserve it.

Chanyeol decides now that he likes this officer a lot more than the one who had grabbed him roughly on the rooftop.

“I’m sorry.” 

It sounds dumb, but it’s all Chanyeol can think to say. All he can muster to choke out and not collapse out of nervousness halfway through. He’s never been arrested before, he never thought he ever would be. 

Oddly, the officer chuckles and turns back around in his seat. He doesn’t look back at Chanyeol as he says, “don’t be sorry to me, kid.” 

And even though the officer seemed to be a very patronising kind of guy (Chanyeol was 6 foot _fucking_ one and was a whole twenty one years old for crying out loud) he found that he didn’t exactly mind the belittling.

The following proceedings go something like this: pushed, ushered, searched, personal items taken away, uncuffed ( _hallelujah!_ ) and then pushed again into a very very _very_ grey space ( _not so hallelujah_ ). 

A holding cell.

Chanyeol’s in the process of turning around to get a better look at the cop that shoved him forwards into the room. He’s trying to remember that face and place him on a list of people to loathe and despise for the rest of his time on this Earth. What stops him from glaring what he hopes to be deadly daggers into the cop’s head (in actuality it’s something more along the lines of Puss in Boots from Shrek), is the fact that he can sense someone else’s presence in the room.

Oh _fuck_ no. 

A short cough interrupts Chanyeol’s glaring and effortlessly sends a tingle of nervousness down the center of his spine. His hair stands on end and he visibly winces as he hears the smooth and buttery drawl, “buttercup.” 

He winces even further upon hearing the dreaded nickname. Jesus God it was awful.

Chanyeol hypes himself up to turn around and dismiss the risk of looking like he had frozen out of fear...again. He pivots rather smoothly on the ball of his foot and finds the floppy-haired guy on the top bunk of the bunk bed that was the only piece of furniture in the room despite the toilet and wash basin in the corner.

It is at that moment upon seeing the toilet situation that Chanyeol decides (rather wisely) to hold his nervous pee in if he can help it. He doesn’t want Floppy haired murderer to cut his dick off or something while he’s at his most vulnerable. Besides, what if he got stage fright an suddenly couldn’t piss? 

Oh god and now he’s blushing at the mere thought of it. He’s looking at the murderer and blushing profusely like a Japanese school girl with a crush. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.

The murderer wasn’t even looking at him (thank god) instead he was looking at his nails as though they were the most interesting thing in the world. He was still without a shirt and his arm had been stitched up by one of the medical team at the station so he wasn’t left to bleed out. At least the police weren’t that mean then, Chanyeol decides subconsciously.

He doesn’t know if he does it purposely, but he seems to turn away from the murderer as soon as possible - perhaps to avoid any potential eye contact.

This was going to be a long night.

As he looks up at the ceiling, Chanyeol wonders whether Jongdae was going to come at all. He considers his new life here if help didn’t arrive; how he would be eating something along the lines of gruel that Oliver Twist had eaten at the orphanage, how he’d be forced into one of those hideous Guantanamo Bay orange jumpsuits that looked like something straight out of the TV show Prison Break. 

Swallowing the lump that had swelled in his throat, he tries to contain his emotions. 

How could he get arrested? 

Why had he even considered that _running away_ from the police was the way to go in this situation?

He shudders, and not just from the trail of thought. It was too cold in the room to bare, he was only just managing with the jacket around his shoulders and waist but it wasn’t doing anything to stop his breath from clouding in front of his face in short puffs. 

Unsure of what to do with himself, Chanyeol shuffled about awkwardly on the balls of his feet. He waddles to the small window opening on the door, merely a sliver of glass to the outside world and not technically enough glass to even be counted as a window, alas it was something of a salvation. At least it wasn’t grey out there like it was in the cell, the rest of the station had royal deep blue walls and they were bordering something along the lines of inviting and almost welcoming.

Well, welcoming in comparison to the sickening grey that the cell was painted with. The only colour in the room was on Chanyeol and his apparent cell mate for the night. 

Or the rest of their life depending on whether hope ever came.

From looking through the sliver of glass Chanyeol admittedly couldn’t see much, which, he supposed, was probably the point of the window. It was there to alert those that people were making their way through the corridor and they weren’t completely isolated, not tell them what the outside looked like or whether hope was here yet.

All he could see was the desk they had filled out their details on - still handcuffed to each other and to the officer on the right hand side of Chanyeol - which had proven a rather difficult task considering how easy it had sounded in hindsight. There were a couple of officers prowling around the station, either clocking off or clocking in from what Chanyeol could tell. 

He leans against the sliver of glass and semi-window as he plays a little game with himself to keep himself occupied before madness was sure to set in. He judges by the reactions and facial expressions of the officers coming and going from the front desk and surrounding corridors whether they had been just assigned a shift or if they were just finishing up on one.  
It wasn’t hard to sort the withered ones from the significantly less withered ones, in fact after only a minute of the new game, Chanyeol found he was in need of something else to occupy his brain.

His feet tap an unorthodox rhythm onto the concrete floor as he continues leaning against the wall, looking out into the slight bit of the outside world that he could see. His feet tapping was giving a tell to his bad habit of making a beat everywhere he was. Sehun usually kicked his ass for it in public due to it being increasingly annoying the more time that was spent in Chanyeol’s company. However, because Sehun wasn’t there, he decides to continue doing it. 

He really goes to town on the beat, finding himself concentrating on the rhythm and not on the ever increasing realisation of the impending doom of his parents reaction to finding out he had been arrested for breaking and entering - even if it was just Jongdae’s apartment.

He’s just about to make a sharp U-turn in his mind on that metaphorical avenue when his thought trail is broken. He’s almost thankful for it.

“If you just stand by the door and watch out for your buddy it’s only gonna make time go slower.” 

The tall boy pretty much jumps about three inches off the ground, totally prepared to think his cellmate was going to remain mum for the rest of the time they had together. Apparently he had thought wrong. His thinking was justified after all, his cellmate hadn’t been the most inviting of people when they had fled the scene of the crime together, even throwing a few choice insults at Chanyeol for not being a fast runner.

It was Chanyeol’s fault that they both got caught.

He feels his cheeks go hot and he has to look at the floor just in case his cellmate is looking at him as he talks. He doesn’t want to feel embarrassed and guilty, but he does. Oh God, he really does.

This was why he never left his apartment anymore. 

He just wasn’t good at interacting with other people. 

This was the result of that.

Managing a small peek up from the nice design of his shoes, Chanyeol sees that his roommate had taken refuge on the top bunk. How his cellmate had even known Chanyeol was standing beside the door was beyond him, he wasn’t even looking in that direction. The floppy-haired dude had one knee crossed over the other as he propped it up, he had decided to lie on his back with his slim arms behind his head and his small and lean frame was practically swimming in Jongdae’s old t-shirt. 

He looked the epitome of relaxed - and Chanyeol couldn’t fathom out how he could be so _chill._

Did he _know_ they were in a police station? 

Did he _know_ they had just been arrested? 

It strikes him that his cellmate _might_ have been a murderer. Maybe he was familiar with how police procedural went because he had done this before, making him so relaxed.

Fear suddenly turns the blood in his arms practically antarctic. Chanyeol’s brain strikes him with the information that he knows nothing about this man, that he was locked in a cell at the end of a long hallway of cells with a man who may well be dangerous. 

He finds himself not moving away from the door like his cellmate had suggested, and instead was backing against it with his whole body touching the metal frame in some way or another. Even his ankles were pressed against the only exit in the small room.

Suddenly everything his cellmate did appeared to strike Chanyeol as being somewhat sinister. 

He yawned quietly into his palm which he cupped around his mouth and Chanyeol’s suspecting he’s mimicking what he would look like suffocating the nerdy IT student the murderer was being forced to share a room with. His cellmate also ran a quick hand through his hair, and Chanyeol winces as his brain conjures up images of his own hair being pulled and used as a grip as this stranger stabbed him repeatedly in the back.

Now Chanyeol can’t tell if he’s shaking in fear or if it’s just the cold walls of the cell giving him a cold chill. Either way he finds himself uncomfortable and scared out of his goddamn mind.

Maybe it’s the lack of movement in the air after the cellmate had given a suggestion to move away from the door, but something makes the murderer / floppy-haired guy turn his head to the side to look vaguely in Chanyeol’s direction, not quite looking at him but turning his head in the direction he was near. The murderer’s eyes didn’t follow, they were still cast to the ceiling from what Chanyeol could tell.

“If we ignore each other for the next 12 hours it’s going to be an awful long wait, don’t you think?” 

His cell mate's voice is firm and unwavering but somehow like smooth silky honey all at the same time. He sounds aggressive but also sounds like he couldn’t care less about the situation they both found themselves in. It confused Chanyeol, someone with little to no person-reading abilities, to no end regardless.

Unsure of how he should react, and not trusting his voice due to the feeling of a squeak of surprise and fear bubbling in the back of his throat, Chanyeol simply shifts a little to the left of the door and slides his back down the wall until his tailbone hits the floor with a soft thud.

This was his effort.

At least he was trying something.

It seems to satisfy the murderer however small the gesture could be. The boy on the top bunk jerks his chin as if a sign of approval and casts his head back into the position it was before he started to regard that Chanyeol was actually in the room along with him. 

The tall boy doubts that those ‘mattresses’ or whatever you wanted to call them were anything comfortable. More like anything but.

Silence spreads out in the cell. It’s so quiet that the taller boy of the two is picking up on the fact that he can’t hear anything besides his cell mate’s deep breathing from the top bunk. No talking from the front desk, no discussions between people in the adjacent cells. 

That was when it occurred to Chanyeol that the cells were sound proof.

_Great._

If the murderer chokes him to death now at least no one will be disturbed from their beauty sleep in the adjacent cells by the cries of his final words and last breath. That’s a relief, he didn’t want to be an inconvenience.

 _What ever happened to those barred cells you see in the movies?_ Chanyeol considers, his head falling back to lean against the cold stone behind his nape. In those movies the officer sat across from the cell and waited for someone to collect the petty criminals, and, if needs be, protect the inmates from one another.

Chanyeol was in here alone, and he would have to fight alone.

He clenches his fists in his lap to see what he would look like if he were attempting to throw a punch. His hands are too big and too slim to look even mildly intimidating. He just looks like he’s going to punish someone by playing them a rendition of Moonlight Sonata on piano or tickle them to death with his Mr Tickle Mr Men book arms. 

Maybe if he kept the murderer at bay with clever word play he might be able to dodge any oncoming attacks without actually provoking them in the first place. 

_That’s right Chanyeol,_ he thinks to himself, _keep him away with some puns because that would be the perfect way to get punched in the nose._

He’d read enough criminology and psychiatric profiling findings and reports on murderers to gauge that the last thing he wanted to do was make this guy angry, and he recalls that his puns made Sehun increasingly mad. 

Better not.

He decides to take his knowledge on the subject of criminal profiling as something not wasted and that reading those papers on a Wikipedia odyssey at 3am wasn’t such a waste after all. 

Every cloud has a silver lining, he notes. However he does consider that the silver lining was something beyond slim this time. It was almost as thin as the shard of glass to the outside world that they were granted on their door.

If there was a silver lining, it was doing a good job of disguising itself. Without sugar coating it; he was in jail with someone he didn’t know because they had both broken into the same place at the same time. They’d almost escaped from the cops on rooftops if it hadn’t been for Chanyeol’s oversized feet getting stuck in a bucket and allowing themselves to be caught.

So there.

Silver linings aren't exactly coming thick and fast to say the least.

If Jongdae doesn’t come for his bail in 12 hours he doesn’t know what’s going to happen. Will he be stuck here for life? Will he be faced with court ordered charges?

It was different if Jongdae showed up to bail him out. 

Jongdae was the only one who was able to give the state permission to press charges. However, if he didn’t show, then surely those charges will be inflicted regardless? Chanyeol didn’t know the rules all that well, he usually didn’t do something as bad as to have to get in trouble with his mom, let alone get in trouble with the police. 

He assumes that the law is the law and he’d be facing community service or a fine he supposes. He doesn’t really know, he’s never even read a paper on it. The police have impose the law in order to corner and crack petty criminals like him, it’s the only explanation he can come to.

Good lord.

Was he a petty criminal now?

That lump is back in his throat now. 

_Fuck_ if only they had some kind of water fountain in here, he was gasping for a drink.

He sits there for a minute wondering what they were supposed to do about fluids. Was he supposed to wait it out until morning? Was that how this worked? Didn’t that go against some kind of human right? 

If he couldn’t have water, he imagines they expect him to turn into some kind of animal or a survivalist that drinks it’s own urine for a source of fluid to keep him hydrated in dire times of need.

He shivers again.

Penguins huddle together to keep warm, he notes with a half assed mind. It isn’t even worth asking the floppy-haired guy whether he wants to cuddle though, at least even he can deduce that much. 

Chanyeol spares him a look up to the top bunk as if expecting the murderer to be looking down with arms spread out, beckoning him in for a hug. When he doesn’t see the murderer doing anything of the sort, Chanyeol casts his gaze away back to the pattern on his shoes. 

Besides, the murderer doesn’t seem like the cuddling type.

There’s a long stretching sense of quiet that spreads out in the cell, it seems to almost take on its own noise, turning into some kind of buzzing that rings in Chanyeol’s ears unpleasantly. Perhaps this is the moment when he finally, _finally_ turned insane.

Chanyeol considers for a moment how to get rid of the buzzing noise as, due to its irritating nature, there was an indefinite need to sort it out as soon as it had started. It seems to rattle his skull and cause his fists to ball into the material of his shirt, wanting him to punch something until the noise goes away.

And then he does something either rather stupid or intellectually brilliant.

“It’s cold in here.” 

The words are out there before he can retract them and he finds himself almost raising his hands to his mouth as if to say, _’did I just say that?’_

The silence seems somehow even more horrific now, as though it were mocking him in his attempt to fill the empty space where some kind of noise should have been rather than the irritating buzz of nothingness. 

He hangs his head in shame, not wanting to see the look on the murderer’s face in response to the awkward and socially inept comment that Chanyeol had just made. God did he always have to be this embarrassing?

So imagine Chanyeol’s surprise when he hears a raspy voice mumble, “so you _can_ talk…”

Park Chanyeol nearly shits his pants then and there on the spot merely at the thought he had provoked the murderer to say something, _any_ thing. This was surely the end of him, he considers, knowing that now he has just pushed the floppy-haired man into saying something and probably pushed his patience over the edge too.

Although, it was worth noting that the murderer hadn’t leapt up from the bed yet to throttle him without hesitation. 

Chanyeol lifts his head to look at the boy on the bunk bed, looking so incredibly vulnerable from his spot on the floor that as he raised his head it appeared as though he were on the verge of whimpering and about to paw at Baekhyun’s leg to be taken out for walkies. 

Up on the top bunk is the boy with the floppy hair and lean body, sitting comfortably on the bed with his back against the wall and his ruined dress shoes hanging over the side and swinging leisurely like he had nothing better to do. 

Because… well … they didn’t.

From down on his spot on the floor, Chanyeol couldn’t see the murderer’s face, but he almost didn’t want to. Perhaps some things should be left to the imagination, as Chanyeol’s imagination was doing just fine trying to cut and paste the look of a murderer onto the head of the body above him.

The silence seems to begin to settle again and hence the buzzing returns, which seems to provoke Chanyeol’s mind to act on its own accord again and do something without thinking about it first.

He carries on conversation.

“What’s your name?”

Chanyeol, impressively, isn’t turning his gaze abashedly to the floor anymore. He seems to have had a surge of overwhelming confidence that even he cannot explain to the best of his ability. 

There’s a creek on the top bunk as the mat that the police guards would class as a mattress shifts in place, shifting with the boy that sat atop of it.

“Wouldn’t _you_ like to know.” 

The reply isn’t nasty per se it’s more of a snappy reply that seems to be twinged with annoyance. 

Whether it be the numb of adrenaline in Chanyeol’s bones or the desire to find out the truth about his cellmate, he seems undeterred by the hostility.

“Well… if you won’t tell me that…” He seems to scrounge for something to ask in his mind and hums under his breath as he does so, eventually nodding as he thinks of the right question to ask this stranger. “What were you looking for in Jongdae’s apartment?” 

The mat above Chanyeol’s head shifts violently and with ultimate speed, the legs that had hung over the side being drawn inwards so the boy on the top bunk was no longer visible unless Chanyeol chose to stand up in the small cell.

He waits for some kind of response with apprehension, sensing a bite back for asking too many questions to someone who didn’t want to be probed.

“None of your business, honey,” (it’s not said with endearment). 

The voice has a bitter and had a brittle quality to it that just demonstrated the hostility of Chanyeol’s cell buddy. Although he should have been deterred by the nastiness of the responses, it somehow only drew Chanyeol in closer. It was a type of character he had never come across before.

“Well,” he hatches a plan whilst trying not to smirk and give his cunningness away, “I gave my laptop to Jongdae so he could finish his business management paper last week but I forgot to ask for it back. I needed to help a friend out tonight and I had to get the laptop back as soon as possible. That’s why _I_ was there.” 

Chanyeol found he didn’t mind telling the stranger the ins and outs of why he was there. Perhaps, Chanyeol considers, if he opens up about his details for being there then perhaps he should be able to coax the answers out of the floppy-haired murderer in turn. At least that’s how he hopes to trap the floppy-haired guy in a box. 

Whether it will work or not is another question.

“And I was sat in the dark because if I had turned the light on then Jongdae’s nosy downstairs neighbour would have called the cops because she always knows when he’s home.” He adds, feeling the need to emphasise that was why they had been caught by Mrs Yamakawa from apartment 345.

The mat shifts again, very subtly this time as though the murderer was leaning further into Chanyeol’s side of the room nearer to the door so he could listen to what Chanyeol had to say with some degree of interest. Perhaps drawing the turtle out of the shell wasn’t going to be as hard as it had once seemed. 

Chanyeol, in light of this recent development, decides to try again.

“How did Mrs Yamakawa catch you?” 

Silence follows his question once more, and it’s taking some precious seconds away from Chanyeol’s life span as he realises that the murderer on the top shelf had done as much talking as he had clearly wanted to for the duration of their time together.

Chanyeol finds himself sinking down the wall further and further until he was truly slumped against the door like had been before. He didn’t realise he was so involved in the response his cellmate was giving that he had begun to involuntarily rise up the wall to see the other’s face.

Maybe Chanyeol’s curiosity really was getting the better of him.

It had never served him well before.

 

 

Baekhyun was facing an internal moral dilemma. 

The boy sat on the floor of their shared cell, was very very _very_ cute. 

Oh fucking no.

It had been on the descent from the roof when it had occurred to him that this was the first proper opportunity to get a good look at the lanky boy of whom he had roped into all of this mess. Or he had roped himself into, Baekhyun couldn’t really tell. 

And it all went tits up from there.

The boy’s face was soft and was all gentle edges and light shadows when you looked at him face on. His eyes were large and round, brown shining eyes that almost fucking _glittered_ in the illumination of the officer’s flashlight, probably glimmering with the threat of oncoming tears. His shoulders were broad and but he looked rather slim also, a weird combination that he didn’t get too long to admire due to the nature of their situation (y’know, being ducked down into the back of a cop car and all). 

Baekhyun recalled the tight feeling in his chest as they had reached the sidewalk at the bottom of the stairwell, hoping to God the lanky boy didn’t cry because it would have kindled unbelievable guilt into Baekhyun’s mind and he wouldn’t have been able to shake it. He had never been one to feel guilt for just about anything, he had been hardened by life in a way that not many had. It made him deceptable to the pain. 

But with this boy…

Something was different.

And that made it all the more terrifying. 

In the cop car Baekhyun had probably been a little too nonchalant for the police officer’s taste, eventually reaching the point where neither of the officers would speak to him and turned on the radio to drown out any sense that the asshole in the back seat was still there.

Spoiler alert- he was.

Baekhyun doesn’t smile at the recall of the cop car conversation, but he thinks back on it with the ghost of a smirk on his face. 

Even he had to admit he’d been an asshole.

“Name?” The officer in the passenger seat had swiveled around and barked at him.

Baekhyun barely even looked at him, instead content with twirling the links of the handcuffs with the pad of his thumb, “Noah Fence.”

“Noah Fence?”

“None taken, don’t worry about it. Can I go now?” Baekhyun said, completely deadpanned.

That oh-so-funny joke didn’t go down so well.

“Think you’re funny do you? You’ve just been arrested for breaking into private property and potential theft, I wouldn’t be smirking if I was you, Sunshine.” 

Baekhyun yawned then, and _man_ that was also bad timing, “cool.” 

The officer looked at him for a moment in total silence as the cop car began moving onto the steady flowing traffic of the avenue. He could feel the eyes of the cop driving on him as the silence dragged on. 

He actually thought the officer might take a swing for him, professional or not.

“Name.” 

This time it’s not a question of whether he’ll answer it. He will answer. Baekhyun would be kidding himself if he said he wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated. 

“Byun Baekhyun.” 

If he _was_ intimidated, he certainly didn’t show it. His voice was cool and he was totally collected, his voice wasn’t even shaking. His hands were steady although they had now stopped fiddling with the links of the cuffs. The officer seemed to appreciate this more and relaxed the tense line of his shoulders as though the biggest battle was over.

“What kind of job?” 

Baekhyun relaxes his feet by resting them on the back of the seat in front of him. He lounges and slumps himself in the uncomfortable plastic of the cop car seat. They should really put something comfier back there.

“Depends what mood I’m in. Sometimes hand, sometimes blow-”

Needless to say it had not drawn out the laughter he had been expecting.

He’s brought back from the recall with a smash down to the grotty shared cell he was currently residing in. He didn’t feel quite so clever in here, although if anyone had asked him that he would have strongly denied such feelings. Byun Baekhyun never _ever_ felt stupid. Not even for a moment.

Well…

_Sniff_

Baekhyun’s ears prick up at the sound, drawing him away from his own trapped thoughts.

_Sniff, sniff_

Oh shit.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh _shit_.

Baekhyun freezes on the top bunk, freezing so thoroughly he’s certain he’s stopped his heart beating so as to minimise the noise in the room, he’s holding his breath though that’s for sure. He waits and he listens, hoping what he thinks is happening is not really happening.

_**Sniff** _

Baekhyun lets his eyes fall closed in a moment of ‘this can’t be happening’. The lanky boy, of whom had been dragged into this by Baekhyun’s own horrid doing, was on the floor of their shared holding cell crying. 

It’s a feeling that is unfamiliar to him and one he does not enjoy to savour and even feel at all, but it seems to be happening anyway. Oh God. His heart clenches at the sound of a few more sniffs as he panics on what he should do, knowing full well that it’s his fault they’re in this situation. If it hadn’t have been for Baekhyun’s irrational mind shouting instructions at him as he found any excuse to get his pants back, neither of them would be here. 

Baekhyun didn’t mind being in there, it didn’t really affect his life in the slightest. In the cop car he had found the incident so light hearted he had even teased and bantered with the situation when he most definitely shouldn’t have done. On the roof he had been thinking about only himself when he had tried to escape and almost, ironically, fall to his death because of that. And now in here, he’s thinking back over those memories almost _fondly_ whilst the boy on the floor was blaming himself and thinking of the consequences this situation will have on himself in the future. 

Baekhyun was an asshole. 

__

He couldn’t help it. 

He’d started thinking about what his parents were going to say when they found out, what future employers would do when they looked at his CV, what his sister would think when she found out how he had disappointed them all. He’d been arrested. 

He’d been _arrested_. 

Not only that, the thing that seemed to make the tears come worse was that he had been the reason they had been caught. If Chanyeol hadn’t just overcome his fears and pushed them aside for the slightest moment so he could jump across that building and escape from the cops which had been encircling them on the roof, they wouldn’t be in this mess. They wouldn’t be in there. 

He was sitting with his back against the steel door, his legs pulled up to his chest and his jacket pulled tightly around himself. He was hugging his knees in way of comfort and support and the ache he feels all over is somehow beginning to center itself in the middle of his ribcage. His fingers and toes still ache and sting from the emotions he’s feeling and he hates that unbelievably so. 

When he hurts, he hurts with his whole body. 

And apparently, when he’s disappointed, he feels that with his whole body as well. 

But imagine the true pain that comes from being disappointed in _himself._

He buries his head in the space between where his knees are and the wall of his chest. He sniffs deeply as he tries to cry as quietly as possible, knowing he must look and sound like the biggest weenie that has perhaps ever been locked in a jail cell before. 

_’All the big famous criminals don’t cry when they’re arrested,’_ Chanyeol can’t help but point out to himself. _’Ted Bundy didn’t sob when he got caught and thrown in a place like this.’_

However Chanyeol begins to doubt anything upsets people like Ted Bundy. 

He wonders what that feels like, being immune to even the most heart wrenching and gut aching things, not feeling anything no matter what the situation. 

Chanyeol’s head tilts up, his eyes resting on the two feet dangling off the side of the top bunk. 

Apparently nothing seems to phase the floppy-haired murderer. Even when the police officer had uncuffed them in the cell and Chanyeol had had the fortune of looking upon the guy’s features for split seconds before he moved out of his line of vision, he saw no expression on the boy’s face. None. In fact, he couldn’t seem to care less even if he had tried. 

How many times has someone have to have been arrested for them to look so unbothered by such an event? 

As if sensing someone was looking at him, the guy on the top bunk shifted slightly in the way he was sat as though he were uncomfortable. Although, knowing the personality of this guy already it would have taken a lot more than a puzzling stare in his direction to make him uneasy. Perhaps his legs were aching in the position they were in, but he lifts them up over the side of the bunk and draws them into his body, disappearing from Chanyeol’s view on the floor. 

Chanyeol’s about to bury his head back in between his legs again in an act of yet another defeat when the boy on the top bunk moves again, this time to his left. He moves in a way that makes it obvious to Chanyeol and so that he leaves enough room on the bed which is facing him, possibly as an invitation to sit down? 

He blinks at the newly created space, wondering what on earth had caused this sudden change in approach to him. Minutes before he had been immediately shut down and sassed for trying to start a little bit of friendly conversation, now the tables had apparently turned. 

Perhaps he felt he had to? 

Not wanting to misinterpret the action, Chanyeol finds himself rising to his feet slowly, his knees creaking at the motion and complaining beneath him. He tries to rise from the floor with silence and grace but accidentally ends up bonking the metal buttons and studs of his jeans against the steel door, creating a mood breaking clatter. 

He winces. 

So much for subtle. 

As soon as he reaches a certain height which allows him to see the whole of the boy in the bed above where he had been sat, his eyes try to gauge some kind of an invitation with body language that the other was indeed asking him to sit down. 

The boy was sitting with his legs crossed on the bed, his eyes looking to the far wall where the small little slit of a window should be but wasn’t, instead he was looking at the grey wall with a little too much longing. In his lap he was playing with his own fingers, trying to keep himself occupied no doubt. 

His face was still deadpan. 

Noticing movement, the boy looked over in Chanyeol’s direction, his eyes immediately locking onto Chanyeol and focusing on him properly, a more registered look on his face rather than the blank appearance he had been sporting as he stared aimlessly at the wall. 

Chanyeol thinks his heart is going to explode out of his throat any moment then, feeling like his pulse was a little bit more than just visible on the outside of his skin. He’s paused halfway between a crouch and fully standing, and he only ever had to return to this position when he talked to little kids or Kyungsoo. 

Neither of them moves, and this is the first time that Chanyeol hasn’t backed down from looking the floppy-haired guy in the eye or the first time he had been given the chance to without interruption. 

He had to suck in a breath. 

Deep bronze-coloured eyes, sharp jawline and feather soft floppy hair. 

Oh sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph. 

A moment of silence passes. 

And then the murderer, ever so slightly, shifts further along the mattress to make space. 

Chanyeol doesn’t even breathe as he raises to his full height and pushes himself up onto the top bunk, taking a very weary seat up there beside the murderer. 

He doesn't even let out a breath as the murderer scans him over, or even when the floppy haired guy looks as though he's trying to piece together something to make Chanyeol feel better. 

Where on earth was this going?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, 
> 
> I'M SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG.
> 
> I LOVE YOU.
> 
> THANK YOU FOR BEING PATIENT.

Chanyeol glanced up, uncertainty written all over his face as clear as day. 

The Floppy-Haired murderer won’t look him in the eye and he appears to be doing an excellent job of scanning the floor, studying every crevice. 

Unsurprisingly, Chanyeol was skeptical. 

This boy had broken into Jongdae’s house, had been looking for something that Chanyeol was still none the wiser to even now, had been the cause for getting them arrested for misconduct of the law and was now covered in his own drying blood with a makeshift tourniquet tied onto his upper arm on the top bunk of a holding cell.

And yet…

His face was somewhat calm, nothing of intimidation or the oncoming threat of destruction. 

Slowly - slower than Chanyeol thinks he’s ever moved - he begins to inch towards the bunk bed. 

And then he’s pulling his leg over.

And then he’s hoisting himself up, all the while with his eyes glued to the expression on the murderer’s face. 

He doesn’t realise he’s holding his breath until he sighs deeply as his butt makes contact with the gym-mat mattress.

His cellmate says nothing, his eyes still studying the floor. However now he’s upgraded to picking something from underneath his fingernails as though they were manicured (spoiler alert, they’re caked in what looks like dried blood). 

It is here that Chanyeol realises something.

He’s sitting within a two metre radius of the murderer, and… and-

_He’s not dead yet._

Silently he praises himself, reciting the lines to many jail break-out video games he’s played with Sehun in the past as though that made him a certified criminal and jail rat. 

He’s about to ask the dude if he’s serving “Buck Rogers Time” or if he’s ever “danced on the blacktop” when the Floppy-Haired Guy raises his head to look from the floor, his eyes lifting upwards and trailing over the room to eventually land on Chanyeol’s practically quivering form.

His heart is in his throat, hammering away and touching the back of his tongue in fleeting brushes. He tries to swallow it back down to it’s usual resting place, trying to look as inconspicuous and unafraid as possible, but he can’t do it. He’s a mess and he knows he looks exactly how he feels.

He’s back to holding his breath again. 

As the guy’s eyes land on Chanyeol, Mr Park sights a feeling of confusion pang from within his stomach. Criminal eyes weren’t supposed to be so… _pretty_.

He knew they were brown and that they seemed to give his face a softer look from afar, but up close it was something else entirely.

Chanyeol suddenly feels sick. He did _not_ just think that.

If he weren’t frozen with fear he’d be shaking his head to erase the thought before it could blossom into anything more. Yet he can’t do that. He’s glued to the spot and he’s shamelessly staring right at the guy’s face.

This was the first time Chanyeol was actually looking at this guy up close.

And somehow Chanyeol wishes he hadn’t looked at him at all tonight because it seemed to throw an unpredictable spanner into the works. This guy, the guy with the floppy hair and the toned body (albeit it was covered in blood and grime but _beneath_ that), was undeniably one of the most attractive guys he had ever laid eyes on.

_Oh fucking hell…_

He almost gasps as the murderer lifts a hand from his lap and brushes the long soft hair that has fallen into his eyes, slim fingers moving with elegance and grace over his forehead and knotting themselves in the feathery brown hair that sat atop his head.

“Byun Baekhyun.” 

It takes Chanyeol a moment to realise that the guy was speaking to him. 

He was saying his name.

He was introducing himself.

Somehow putting a name to the Floppy-Haired Guy seemed to make him somewhat less evil and forbidden. Chanyeol wasn’t sure if he liked the sense of comfort that came with knowing that this guy’s name wasn’t something like ‘Skull Smasher McGee’ or something more horrific like ‘Dead Rabbits’. 

What if the murderer was trying to get Chanyeol more comfortable before he attacked? Was that how he lured his prey? He was almost like a siren, beautiful and luring sailors to the rocks to their imminent demise. 

Chanyeol seems to snap out of his moment of daydream (and shameless staring), straightening his back and trying without success to wipe the look of alarm off of his face. 

“O-Oh!” He says a bit too loudly, his voice echoing off of the walls of the cell. “I’m Park Chanyeol.” 

Those deep brown eyes, the colour of leaves in Autumn, looked at him for a long time. They scanned ‘Yeol’s face, his body and his posture. It was like being at passport control. 

And then, they moved into two very slight and minute crescent shapes. 

The boy was smirking slightly, and it was without any malicious notions. 

He looks away as if embarrassed, but he’s very good at keeping his facial expressions restricted. As he looks away, Chanyeol is left to put the pieces of a very confusing puzzle together - 

What did that smile mean?

 

 

Baekhyun couldn’t take this, he just simply couldn’t take being in this cell until morning with this boy.

With _Chanyeol_.

He plays the name over in his mind and, naturally being Baekhyun, he can’t help but wonder how the name would sound on his own lips as he would tip his head back with this tall and slim boy’s lips wrapped around his- 

_No_.

He reprimands himself. 

He wasn’t going to embarrass himself by getting a ridiculous hard-on in the middle of this holding cell. 

He wasn’t going to make a pass at this boy.

There was something about the innocence and the naivety in his tone, in his completely open facial expression and his defenceless self that made Baekhyun feel a strong sense of a need to protect. 

For once in his life Baekhyun was unable to think about fucking this very cute boy, all he wanted to do to his boy was… _kiss him_.

And, Baekhyun being Baekhyun, the thought terrified him. 

He didn’t do affection, he didn’t do the _’L word’_

As if Chanyeol could read his emotions like an open book, Baekhyun quickly looks away and attempts to make it seem like he was indifferent to Chanyeol’s presence on the bed with him. He doesn’t have the slightest clue how good a job he’s doing at that, but he knows it isn’t his best work.

It was going to be a long night.

“How do you know Jongdae?” 

Baekhyun’s head snaps up from where his gaze had been settled on the floor. He feels himself closing all the doors off, shutting any connection down at any costs. 

This cute boy could not know how he felt, he’d find a way to use it against Baekhyun. It must be his best weapon, being that cute and innocent Baek’ couldn’t help but feel he’d trap him and then he’d have nowhere to run.

He wasn’t going to let that happen. 

“What’s it to you?” Baekhyun spits out, his face twisted in sudden aggression. 

He’s trying to penetrate Baekhyun’s borders, he can sense it. Not on his watch.

He would have usually been proud of himself in pushing back this boy’s obviously experienced disarming however the look on the other’s face seems to send the inner victory deep down where it cannot be heard.

Chanyeol’s face shows a very obvious flash of pain. 

And, with a jolt, Baekhyun realises there’s something else there. 

_Fear._

Chanyeol looks away as if the expression Baekhyun had given him was scalding hot. 

That pang of guilt is back in Baekhyun’s stomach and he quickly attempts to think of a way to fix what he’s just done, hating himself for making Chanyeol flinch away from him like that. Baekhyun wasn’t a scary person, he just seemed like that on the outside. 

He almost feels a lump in the back of his throat as he realises he’s scaring Chanyeol. He realise how he must look; blood all over him, breaking into an apartment, acting like this is all nothing to him - like getting arrested is literally a day to day task for him. 

The guilt intensifies and he forces himself to look at Chanyeol, attempting to catch his eye again. 

He scrambles for anything to fix this, any way possible to rectify what he’s done. 

“How do _you_ know Jongdae?” 

Baek’ cringes at himself, his voice still coming off cold and discouraging but slightly less venomous than before. 

It seems to do the trick though, because the next time Chanyeol chances a glance at him he looks not as wounded as before. If anything now he seems a bit more determined to seem less weak, as if he were challenging Baekhyun and rising to his tone. 

“We know each other from university. And we’re in the same guild for most of the video games we play-”

Chanyeol seems to cut himself off before he could end the sentence, something running over his features along the lines of disbelief. It quickly switches to something that resembles being horrifically mortified as an outrageous blush befalls his features.

Baekhyun can’t help but start to smile, finding it immensely adorable.

“Video games?” Baekhyun begins, but as Chanyeol seems unable to look him in the eye once more and is now looking at his hands in his lap like they held the answers to why he had said such a thing, Baek’ decides to change the subject. 

For Chanyeol’s sake. 

“What do you study at university?” 

Baek’ feels a sense of accomplishment in how Chanyeol’s blush subsides slightly and finds he can sheepishly look at him whilst he talks rather than turning away in shame. He shoots Baek’ a look that appears he is almost grateful for him changing the subject.

“Economics and music technology. It sounds boring and that’s because it kind of is most of the time.” 

“That’s not boring.” Baekhyun says, perhaps a little bit too fiercely. 

Chanyeol looks at him for a moment; at first seeming a little taken aback by the defence but then allowing a small impish grin to play on his lips. “Yeah I suppose. Economics is if you want a job that scams people and music technology if you want a job that rips people off. Anyone could string a few chords together and make a song and charge a bomb for it.” 

Even though he brushes it off as nothing, Chanyeol seems significantly more at ease now that they were talking. They had a whole night to spend together, and Baekhyun doesn’t think he could take sitting in silence and missing an opportunity to speak to him, they seemed like they were from two different worlds. When else would he meet someone like this?

“Are you musical?” 

Baekhyun curses his uncontrollable curiosity. He’s doing this to make the other feel better he tells himself. It has absolutely nothing to do with his own interests in this guy. None at all. 

He can feel Chanyeol looking at him inquisitively, like Baekhyun had an ulterior motive. He begins to question, under the heat of Chanyeol’s gaze, whether he actually did have one. 

Oh God, what was he doing? And why was he being so fucking _obvious_ about his feelings? 

 

 

Chanyeol doesn’t understand this guy at all. 

He bites at Chanyeol as if he was the one that is doing him some great wrong, but then when Chanyeol shuts up he proceeds to ask questions into his life as if he’s actually interested. 

Does he have some kind of ulterior motive? 

Weirdly though, he’s already feeling a hell of a lot more comfortable than he was before. Granted he’s still not doing so hot, this guy changes his mood like he changes his clothes and it was somewhat scary to be sitting this close to the guy with nothing to separate them. Hell, Chanyeol can even feel the heat radiating off of Baekhyun’s body in waves despite it being positively freezing in the cell. 

“I guess,” Chanyeol begins, the shake going from his voice gradually with each time he speaks. “I mean I play a lot of instruments but-” 

“Like what?” Baekhyun says, his voice so much more gentle now than it had been at the start. It was like he was being genuine, and for some reason Chanyeol couldn’t resist falling into the trap of indulging this guy in conversation. 

There’s a voice in the back of ‘Yeol’s head that’s practically screaming at him that _this was the guy that got you arrested_ yet the irresistible pull of this peculiar stranger is so intense that Chanyeol literally can’t help himself or save himself now. 

This guy was undeniably cute as fuck, and it felt like he was letting down his murderous persona. 

That might have just been Chanyeol’s shitty intuition though. 

And it was usually pretty shitty. They often had a complete blitz out on CS:GO when Chanyeol was put in charge of a mission and - therefore - decisions. 

“Uhh…” 

He awkwardly clears his throat a little too loud in the ridiculously silent room.

“Guitar… piano, drums of all kinds, uhh…” 

It’s now that Chanyeol chances another glance in Baek’s direction. 

Baekhyun’s looking at him with this look that takes Chanyeol a second to understand and register. Baek’s eyes are wide and he’s kind of pretending to be nonchalant about how interested he is by the way he’s sitting; his back against the wall and his arms folded. What gives away how actually interested he is is how wide his eyes are and how, when his concentration slips, his face falls out of the slight scowl and into a softer, less tense look. 

There seems a tightness in Chanyeol’s chest then, a tightness which came with a certain social pressure of the desire to impress someone. 

‘Yeol’s sure he’s not done the job of impressing Baek very well by the unrecognised way he’s looking at him as he babbles on ridiculously. 

But then, the unconvincing controlled look wipes across his features and is replaced with something that resembled an actual _smile_.

Chanyeol almost gasps aloud, as if that was something socially acceptable to do.

He swallows it down, still gazing at Baekhyun as his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat with the movement of his gullet.

“Something of a musical prodigy then?” 

It’s almost too much to behold. 

Baekhyun has no trace of mockery or distaste in his voice, if anything one could class the words as being a… _compliment_

Very very subtly, Chanyeol reaches his fingers over his leg in an attempt to pinch himself. This was merely to clarify he was indeed still awake and dismiss the fact this was not in fact some horrific nightmare that needed to end soon for the sake of his sexual frustration and testosterone.

“I mean I just started learning when I was young. And once you know how to play one drum it’s not that difficult to be able to play them all.” 

Chanyeol chances another cautious look over at Baekhyun as if he’s going to take some offence at his modesty, but is once again genuinely and completely shocked to find Baekhyun is still smiling at him in that ‘low-key’ kind of way.

Baek even continues to say, with the smile never leaving his face, “if only we had a harmonica we really could have gone to town on the whole jail cell, prison buddies thing.” 

Now he was telling fucking _jokes_.

‘Yeol wonders if his mouth his hanging open in surprise or if he’s doing a semi-decent job of masking his disbelief.

Chanyeol, being so caught off guard, finds himself laughing. Perhaps a little too loudly, but he was socially awkward at the best of times so this wasn’t anything unusual. One fleeting glance over at the guy he was sharing the bunk space with told him this was actually welcomed because it seemed to cause some sense of satisfaction within Baek.

Upon the sudden lifting mood that Chanyeol had been striving for ever since the cell had been occupied by just the two of them, he felt a need to change the subject matter away from himself. Although Baekhyun had been defensive about any questions that had been fired his way before this moment, ‘Yeol wonders if he’s done enough to break the ice.

“So-” 

He doesn’t even let Chanyeol finish.

“So?” 

He’s got an eyebrow raised and within those split seconds of telling a joke he’s back to borderline hostile again. What on earth was going on? 

Chanyeol wasn’t the best person to be thrust into social situations even on a good day, but even he could discern that there was something peculiar about this encounter. Something peculiar about this boy in general.

It was almost as if Baekhyun wanted to get to know Chanyeol, but didn’t want the road to go both ways.

What was he hiding?

What was he ashamed of?

Some part of Chanyeol realised he could no longer give a shit about such matters. It seemed he wanted to break through, if anything he was _dying_ to know more about this strange boy without the shirt and with floppy hair.

He was oozing mystery, and Chanyeol was now on some kind of a self proclaimed mission to get to the bottom of it. 

“ _So,_ ” he challenges, “what were you trying to get out of Jongdae’s apartment?” 

Adrenaline is pumping through his veins, even upon being presented with such a menial task of asking a question. He felt like he was on the verge of busting a myth from ‘Mythbusters’ or something. It kind of resembled the nervous energy that would go around his clan like wildfire before a raid on World of Warcraft. 

But he didn’t say that last bit aloud, he didn’t want total social humiliation this early on into what was looking to be a budding friendship.

Well, maybe not friendship. Maybe… 

Nevermind.

“Underwear.” 

Chanyeol nearly chokes on his own spit, “what?”

Baekhyun looks practically sheepish as he glances at Chanyeol through his thick lashes. The embarrassment is clear on his face, and there’s a pang of emotion that ‘Yeol identifies as empathy. He can relate to the embarrassment on a personal level.

“Don’t laugh.” Baekhyun tries to bark, the words coming out as more of a plea. “I’m glad you think I’m amusing.” 

He’s trying to sound intimidating however Chanyeol isn’t buying it at all. This close up to the guy you could practically run your fingertips over the cracks in his armor, there was no escaping the fact that this was a story Chanyeol wanted to hear. 

“We have so many hours to kill,” ‘Yeol begins, “it would be a crime not to hear that story.” 

It’s now that Chanyeol is exposed to a side of Baekhyun which is probably the closest he has come thus far to discovering the inner conflict of Baek’s true self. 

 

His face is contorted almost as he begins to decipher the emotions he’s feeling. Baekhyun wants to shut the door on this conversation as it leads to an explanation and reveal on his side that ultimately this guy’s character was not in motion of. However on the flip side something seems to be pushing him to reveal everything, reveal the truth. 

Chanyeol didn’t know what the _something_ was yet, and he had a suspicion that Baekhyun didn’t really know the ins and outs of it either. 

“Jongdae and I got into a bit of a ruckus in his house last night.” 

Baekhyun stops what he’s saying as if the words are difficult for him to get out, and then he stops dead with a blatant period which ends the whole thing rather abruptly. 

Chanyeol, already feeling himself being drawn into this guy further and further the longer they spend in the cell, motions his hand for Baekhyun to continue. 

There’s a fleeting look of annoyance that flickers across Baekhyun’s face, like he figured that Chanyeol would ask for more details but is damned that he had the nerve to actually do so. 

“And well…” He begins to play with his hands out of nervousness, not liking that he is being practically forced to share his story. “My quick escape in the morning turned into a leap, skip  
and a hop for freedom when he woke up early before I had even got my pants on. He was talking about getting breakfast and I was so embarrassed I grabbed my jeans, missing my boxers in the commotion.” 

There’s an element of mortification in the tone of his voice, however his face and body language are putting up the facade that he’s not embarrassed by this event at all. His back is straight and his face is deadpan, almost dignified if you could believe it. 

It’s a weird contradiction to behold and honestly it’s one that he cannot believe he’s witnessing. This guy Chanyeol had the luxury of staying the night with was the most bewildering person he had ever come across.

When Chanyeol’s smile breaks out at the hilarity of the scene, Baekhyun’s fake pride seems to subside and he looks back down at his hands as though they were an anchor for his comfort. 

Sensing that Baekhyun was feeling mildly uncomfortable with the situation and Chanyeol just laughing at a situation that is causing him some emotional turmoil, ‘Yeol scrambles mentally for a change of the subject.

As he does so a silence falls, and Baekhyun continues to play with his hands.

The longer Chanyeol is in this guy’s company, the more he realises that this guy is less sure of who he’s trying to be than was first thought. The cocky and arrogant guy who sauntered through the bedroom window of Jongdae’s apartment seemed to be a fragmented memory of the past, something from long ago when Chanyeol knew nothing. 

And yet, he still knew nothing about this guy even now.

Maybe he should…

“So, are you at university?” ‘Yeol attempts to ask, hoping to know more.

Baekhyun shoots him down almost immediately, barely letting room for breath at the end of the question mark. “So, you’ve never been arrested before?” 

Chanyeol frowns. 

He’ll keep trying till he breaks through, to hell with etiquette. 

“No, I haven’t.” He admits, not feeling the slightest bit of sheepishness. This time he’s the one to be proud, his back straight and his arms folded across his chest. Who would be proud of getting arrested anyway? Thugs? Fuckboys? Lil Pump?

“You’ve never done anything ‘arrest-worthy’?” Baekhyun inquires, seeming as though he were genuinely surprised. God knows why, this was Park Chanyeol he was talking to.

“ _No._ ” He says incredulously.

He ponders.

“Well, I downloaded some illegal music from 4Shared when I was younger-”

“Oh, a true criminal ladies and gentlemen, lock him up and throw away the key!””

Chanyeol ignores him.

“You’ve been arrested before?” 

Once again Baekhyun completely side steps the question and throws the subject back around to being on Chanyeol. 

So far, breaking down Baekhyun’s walls were proving to be an impossible challenge. 

“You’re a goody-two-shoes then? Never got detention at school, never handed a homework in late, never overstepped your curfew at home-”

“Well what’s the point in breaking rules? They’re set for a reason-”

“You realise the phrase ‘rules are made to be broken’ is popular and widely used, don’t you?” 

“Yeah, mostly used by people who find themselves in all kinds of trouble that I don’t want to be involved in.” 

Baekhyun seems to look at him very carefully. After a long pause he says, “are you sure you don’t want to be involved in it?” 

Chanyeol is so caught off guard he nearly chokes on his own spit again. “W-what do you mean?” 

“Surely you must see it on movies. People go out, they break a few rules and they have the best night of their lives. Sitting at home and being a law abiding citizen gets a bit boring sometimes, doesn’t it? White picket fences and neighbours called Gary and Suzie are the reason people go to university and the cities. They go to escape the mundane.” 

“What’s your point?” 

“Everyone wishes to walk on the wildside, even if it’s just once in their life. For those who don’t walk the wildside, they watch the people that do with some kind of longing but never getting involved.” 

“Stop.” 

Baekhyun looks taken aback. “Sorry?” 

“I said stop.” For the first time since they ended up together tonight, Chanyeol’s mad at something. “Stop acting like you’ve got me all figured out. You don’t even know me.” 

Baekhyun stares long and hard at Chanyeol, so long that the silence between them becomes marginally awkward. Meanwhile ‘Yeol is squeezing his palms together and trying to calm himself down before he starts to snap at the guy and piss him off.

“Tell me I’m wrong.” 

Now Chanyeol is the one staring.

“Tell me I’m wrong.” Baekhyun repeats, a small smirk forming on his face. “Tell me you like being good all the time, tell me you enjoy the boring bits and the grey of it all. Tell me you like the mundane.” 

Chanyeol doesn’t say anything.

“Good family life, friends at school, friends around him all the time, is determined to do the right thing and prosper in life the way society tells him he should.” 

He doesn’t say anything because this guy’s got it in one. 

All the parties he never got invited to at school, all the late night drinking sessions that his ‘friends’ would have that he could never relate to or want to go to, all the times he’d seen kids his own age do something reckless and smile and laugh through it all.

He wanted that.

He’s always wanted to do the things he shouldn’t, to break the rules and _fucking live a little._

And yet…

“Yet you never tried to involve yourself in that,” Baekhyun continues, “you watched from the outside and observed everyone else breaking out of the grey and mundane, but you never tried to have a slice for yourself.” 

Chanyeol is playing with the hem of his sweater like he’s gripping onto a single blade of grass on a cliff edge. He’s so out of his depth in this situation that he feels helpless, like he’s falling ass over tit over a monumentally high drop. 

And all he can do is sit there on the top bunk; elbow to elbow with the stranger who got him tangled up in all this, all his secrets coming apart at the seams.

“Because you were too afraid.” 

The way Baekhyun says it is as if he’s feeling the utmost sympathy for the lanky boy with the rules complex. Almost like there was empathy and relatable notions in the way he had figured out and undone everything Chanyeol had built up and hid for the past 19 years. 

“H-how… How do you....?” 

‘Yeol is hopeless, and he knows he’s been caught out because he doesn’t try and cover his own back. He knows.

And a part of him doesn’t seem to mind, because the only person who had ever figured out the true nature of Chanyeol’s complex is merely a cellmate for the night of whom he may never see again after they are released. However equally there’s an element of embarrassment and vulnerability that comes with someone discovering your biggest secrets. Especially when they’re hot strangers who got you arrested on the same night they figured you out entirely.

“Because I wanted to break out of that trap myself.” 

Chanyeol blinks at him. 

All Baekhyun can do is shrug.

“I didn’t want to spend my life the easy way, I wanted to _live_.” 

_That._

That was the closest Chanyeol had come to an actual insight into this guy, into who he was and why he was this way. Why he was so reckless as to scale a fire escape in the middle of a frosty night with no shirt and break into an apartment. Why he was so crazy as to jump over the rooftops of buildings. Why he was so out of his mind to possibly bother engaging Chanyeol in a conversation at all. 

Finding his voice again, Chanyeol whispers, “And have you lived?” 

Baekhyun, seemingly at a loss for barricading himself again, pauses for a second. 

“Not without consequences.”

 

 

Baekhyun knows he’s just cracked this guy open in half. He knows the secret that lies within, and he didn’t even have to force Chanyeol to say a word. It was clear from the way he had handled the situation thus far.

It wasn’t that Baekhyun was a good people person and he could read anyone like an open book, the answer here lay in that fact that he was first and foremost an ex-Chanyeol.

Takes one to know one.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chanyeol asks, anger rising in his voice. The vulnerability that Baekhyun had brought upon him seemed to be causing him discomfort and now the cogs in his mind were turning to find Baekhyun’s secrets, to find his weaknesses.

Usually Baekhyun would sit back and let anyone ask personal questions with no responses until they were blue in the face, but this time was different.

“You can’t be reckless and the wrong side of the morals and expect to come out unscathed.” 

This time, it wasn’t like the person asking was someone close to him. Baekhyun had never even seen Chanyeol’s face before today (he’d remember a face like that, _oooof_ ). This meant that this person didn’t know anyone he knew, their paths would never cross again most likely as they are - quite obviously - from two different walks of life. 

If anyone was going to be granted the privilege of knowing the real Byun Baekhyun, it was going to be someone like him.

Someone exactly like Chanyeol. 

Someone who wouldn’t tell, because there was nothing in it for them. Nothing for them to gain by securing that vulnerability.

Perhaps Baekhyun had been bottling it all up for too long and keeping too much to himself. Perhaps he had been sick to the back teeth of dealing with these feelings for so long, keeping his story to himself out of shame and pain that he needed to share. Like to go any further from this point without anyone else knowing would truly break him, whoever that person may be.

“I’ve hurt people being this way,” Baekhyun takes a shaky breath. It’s hard to believe this is the same guy from merely an hour ago who would barely talk to Chanyeol, “I’ve hurt _myself_ being this way.” 

Rather politely, Chanyeol remains quiet as he silently presses for Baekhyun to continue, but in his own time. 

It wasn’t like they were short for time.

“When I was 16, I was like you.” Baekhyun begins, knowing that once he starts this story - that’s it. The secret’s out. But it didn’t matter, because Chanyeol would be another passing face in the crowd who wouldn’t truly care or bother to remember Baekhyun’s tale no matter what happened or how much he knew.

“I wouldn’t break a rule, I handed homework in on time, I never got detention, I made sure that I was kind and polite to everyone I met.”

 

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but what happened?” 

He takes a moment to gather his thoughts, to collect what happened in his mind like he hadn’t thought about it for years on repeat. 

“Teenagers are cruel. _People_ are cruel. They’ll find your biggest weakness and turn it against you. They’ll find out your secret and use it to tear you from the inside out. They do this purely to turn eyes away from their own secrets and self conscious elements, but it doesn’t make you forgive them any less.

I wasn't really like the rest of them when I was that age. I was rule abiding, I had good morals and I was polite. Like you.”

He hears himself speaking, and he knows how this story goes as if it had been printed onto his mind with a hot iron, yet he can’t believe this is happening. No one has ever heard this story, and now he was spilling it all to the adorable stranger who seemed to care more than most. 

Maybe that was why Baekhyun felt compelled to tell it finally. He needed a stranger, someone who wouldn’t have a reason to use this against him. To use Baekhyun’s own shame as a weapon.

“They only cared about what would get the biggest laugh, what would be funny and what would give them an adrenaline rush. I suppose because that wasn’t what I was looking for, they took offence to that. They saw that as a weakness of mine.

Back then, and sometimes now, being gay in high school meant you were exiled and ridiculed. When word got out that I had kissed a guy that was an exchange student from America in my Chemistry class over the summer before we moved up into senior year, everything changed.”

Retelling the story that Baekhyun had kept quiet for so many years was truly emotionally draining and he knew he was going to have to bite back tears when he got to the worst of it. He daren’t look at Chanyeol for fear of backing out now and not being able to finish what he had started. 

“People would spit on me in the corridors, they’d call my parents and announce to them that I was a danger to society because I was gay and that I should be sectioned with the proper ‘help’. I never got a coming out story, mainly because everyone else knew I was gay before I did. And everyone else was disgusted with me. I wasn’t the same guy anymore. At least, not to them.

One day I think I just snapped. I wanted my life to go better than it had been, I’d endured the torture of this disgust and pain long enough. I wanted the people who had ruined my life to feel the same kind of suffering I had endured….

It was a dark time. And I don’t look on this with pride, nor will it ever make me feel satisfied or like I got compensation I deserved for my endurance.

Chan Li, the girl who had seen me kiss the exchange student and proceeded to tell everyone, had had sex with one of our teachers- Mr Xian. The only reason I knew was because I stayed at school to gain extra credit for something and ended up going home later than usual. I saw them in Xian’s car in the parking lot, just going at it.”

Baekhyun can feel the shame and regret brewing in his throat, the lump that sat in his gullet and the sting of tears behind his eyes was enough to remind him that this truly was his tragic backstory. 

The story of his becoming, the story of his facade and his icy demeanor. 

“My dad had some spray paint cans in his garage, so I took them and went to Chan Li’s home. It must have been early hours because no one was on the roads and all the lights were off in her house.”

His vision is beginning to blur as he stares at his hands, his eyes watering but not yet streaming.

“I spray painted on her house her biggest secret… as big as I could fit the letters in. You could have seen it from the other side of town.

At the time I felt _alive_. It was the first thing I had done that truly was out of line, that was forbidden territory. Something about that also felt hollow as the minutes past and the adrenaline rush faded away. 

We use other people’s pain to hide our own. 

Like I said, people are cruel. 

I was cruel.”

Baekhyun feels his nails digging into his palm from his balled fists. 

“I left town about a week later, just packed up my stuff and moved in with Minseok in the city - my current flatmate. I never told anyone it was me. Even my parents don’t know why I was so eager to get out of town.”

Chanyeol is silent, and Baekhyun knows he cannot turn back the hands of time now. All his suffering is projected onto Chanyeol for a split second in their passing of paths, and there’s nothing they can do to change that now. 

So, Baekhyun bravely looks Chanyeol in the eye. 

“The wildside isn’t always as fun as it seems. I feel guilty for the path that lead me here, I feel guilty for the pain I caused.”

Chanyeol is scanning Baekhyun’s expression with a surprisingly blank look on his face.

“So I reinvented myself when I moved in with Minseok. I knew they’d broken me once, that they’d turned me into some monster all because I was different and I wanted to be a good person who basked in the mundane grey of it all. But little by little I came to realise that I had to blend in, that I had to be the guy that was just like the rest of them. Young, reckless and unthinking. 

They say be yourself, but look where that got me.”

There’s a choking noise that erupts in Baekhyun’s throat. 

“I just want to get the chance to say sorry. I want to stop acting like I don’t care, like I’m cold and heartless and only in it for my own gain. I’m tired of being this person I invented that gets drunk every weekend and has sex all the time. I miss being myself, whoever that is.” 

 

 

 

His head is in his hands, his feet swinging on the bunk below him. 

“I’d do anything to throw it all away and start again.” 

Between them, Baekhyun had been through so much more hardship, so much more struggle. It wasn’t even worth comparing Chanyeol to the other. One of them was clearly an adult - fully fledged and battling the world head on as though nothing bothered them or threw them off course - and the other was nothing more than a pathetic teenager. 

That’s something he notices, stark and apparent in his mind as soon as he thinks it and suddenly unable to shake it. 

They couldn’t be more different. 

Baekhyun had been through so much in such a short life that Chanyeol sits there observing every crevice and stress line on his face as though it mapped out his struggles. Most of them did. One very apparent and sickening thing was that there were dark rims under Baekhyun’s eyes however in the corner of his eye in between where the temple met the finishing tip of the eyebrow, there were no evidence of laugh lines like Chanyeol had. 

No evidence he had ever smiled brightly and laughed until his ribs ached and his stomach clenched, no signs he had ever had more fun than what was the bare minimum. 

Chanyeol feels his chest tighten. 

Was his unhappiness that strong and overwhelming?

Outside the cell there is the evidence of banging and clattering simply by the vibrations on the concrete floor, the walls and door padded to make the room entirely sound proof. 

It was just them and the stretching silence that dragged on between them.

“I’m sorry.”

It’s all Chanyeol can find to say in the silence, to break that streak and cut the tension short. It’s a relief he can even speak, having been seemingly tongue tied all night from the moment they had met.

And as of that moment, Chanyeol still didn’t see the significance of that very fact that he could barely speak a word in Baekhyun’s presence.

“Don’t be sorry.” Baekhyun practically bit, his voice coming out bitter and abrupt as though he were being insulted and acting in retaliation.

 _No one’s ever cared enough to say sorry to him before,_ Chanyeol thinks, his eyes turning to the boy on the bed once more like he had gained the courage to look at him finally. 

His eyes turned upwards, and the second he did so and made eye contact with the boy with the floppy hair, he knew his heart had broken in two.

Or three.

Or several thousandths.

Baekhyun’s eyes were glassy.

Chocolate brown and fixated on Chanyeol as though his life depended on the maintaining of the eye contact between them, his eyes glassy and shining in his apparent moment of defencelessness. 

His face is relaxed but his mouth is the only thing that is tensed, his lips pursed together and a small choking sound coming from his throat as his Adam’s apple bobs uneasily in its resting place. 

This was what was underneath all that armor.

Pain.

Suffering.

Disbelief that he would ever turn out this way.

From that young boy who had possessed so many dreams at a young age, had wanted to go on and save the world from something that everyone else thought was impossible. That boy now, of whom Chanyeol had thought was nothing but a shell and void of all emotion, was baring everything as though he had nothing to lose.

And there, in a soundproof cell where they had merely an hour left of their jail time before they would be tossed out of the cell onto the street and made to make their way back home, Chanyeol realised that this boy really didn’t have anything to lose after all.

Unless…

“Do you want to do something?” 

Even if this didn’t turn into the budding romance that Chanyeol wants it to so badly, it didn’t mean Baekhyun should be alone in a big bad world that seemed out to get him at every turn.

He’d already been through enough.

Baekhyun, of whom had been focusing on a very interesting spot on the wall of the cell, didn’t even turn away from his beloved focal point as he said “what is there to do in here?” 

Chanyeol pauses, shaking his head. It seems to shake his hair around wildly, and it’s enough to trap Baekhyun’s attention. 

Suddenly, Chanyeol feels a whole sense of nervousness in his entire body. He feels the kind of on-the-edge jitteriness that came when he had first clambered up onto that bunk bed a few hours ago in apprehension and alert.

“I meant when we get out…” He swallowed thickly. “Maybe we could… do an activity together?” 

There seems to be a moment of brain processing from Baekhyun’s side for a moment, like this wasn’t adding up and something more taxing was going on here.

“But…” 

_Oh no._

There was a ‘but’.

“But… I told you _about_ me.” 

Now it was Chanyeol’s turn to take a moment to process, to think what he’d just said through. Now _this_ really didn’t make sense. 

And then it did.

No one’s ever been let in like this before, no one’s ever seen a glimpse of what it was like beyond that wall and that impenetrable armor that he worked so hard to uphold. 

Everyone just saw the pretty face, and everyone before that just saw his sexuality.

“That’s kind of why I asked to see you again?” ‘Yeol can’t help but grin sheepishly, like this was forbidden territory that he shouldn’t be wandering in and that he should be masking how much fun he was having. “Because there’s still more I don’t know. Because you’re interesting. You’re like a book that’s waiting to be read, a complete mystery to me. I want to know the mystery. I want to figure you out. And you’re really _really_ cut-”

Baekhyun’s head snaps up in alert, a smirk forming on his face as he listens to where Chanyeol’s sentence was going. 

With burning cheeks and a lack of saliva in his mouth, he manages to change course before the period, “-NICE.” 

Albeit he practically shouted it.

Not so subtle.

It chokes a laugh out of Baekhyun, who was playing with his hands nervously in his lap. 

Baekhyun.

Doing something.

_Nervously._

The silence stretches on for what feels like a lifetime, and it goes on for so long Chanyeol’s torn between restating his offer or abandoning all his hope thus far.

And then, with only an hour or so remaining for the time in the cell before they got their phone call for bail, Baekhyun whispered softly

“Okay.” 

It’s quiet, it’s barely audible. 

It’s exactly what Chanyeol wanted to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave me any feedback down below, it would mean an awful lot. Thank you so much! x

**Author's Note:**

> Ah so this was supposed to be a little in between thing I wrote to sustain myself for a bit but I got too excited and decided to post in two parts whooooppps. Hope you like it so far! It might pull on your heart strings a little in the second bit so stay tuned and all that jazz.
> 
> Give me feedback, it's much appreciated!!


End file.
